


All Roads Lead To

by xyliane



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Magic, Fae & Fairies, HxHBB17, Libraries, M/M, Mentions of Child Death and Child Abuse, Negligent Destruction and Mishandling of Books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-06 06:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11030496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xyliane/pseuds/xyliane
Summary: All roads lead to something. Leorio thought he had a pretty good grasp of where his was going: med school, doctor, cures, fortune. But a trip on a frozen night to the old library on Fourth Street opens a whole new set of roads, ones that lead to sweltering jungles and ones that turn winter into spring and fall. Roads where one wrong step would trap him in an endless loop. Roads that Leorio’s not sure if they even end at all.But mostly, Leorio wants to get to know the blond librarian a little better, even if it means falling into a world where magic grows into everything and no one is as they seem: not his friends, not his school, and certainly not Kurapika.





	1. Down from the Door Where It Began

“‘The presence of malarial retinopathy on pre-mortem fundus examination accurately distinguishes histopathological cerebral malaria from cases that meet the clinical definition but actually have another cause of death…’”

“Leorio.”

“‘...strong association between retinopathy and intracerebral sequestration has been established only in fatal cases, it is likely that…’”

“Leorio!”

He slams his palms down on top of the stack of papers and glares over the top of his glasses. “I am _trying_ . To _study.”_

Mizaistrom Nana, more cowed than usual in his black-spotted jacket, shrugs helplessly around an armful of boxes and nods towards the very short, very angry pug nosed woman fuming at a group of hapless undergrads. Most of them are twice her height and every single one of them is quaking in their sneakers. “You are just reading out loud. Cheadle’s going to kill you if you don’t either help with the move or get out.”

Leorio groans and presses his forehead against the desk in what has become a forehead-shaped indentation. “She’s had me helping all week even though she knows it’s almost the end of term, and she still expects me to ace her stupid tests. It’s my last exam before break. There’s no way I’m going to pass this thing if I can’t stay here with her books.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Mizaistrom says not unsympathetically.

Leorio growls into the wood. “If I don’t pass this, Cheadle’s going to kick me out of lab for good. Even if she doesn’t, I can’t afford to stay in school without this lab job.”

“And if you stay here, our new university president will likely kill you. I’m a lawyer, not a miracle worker.”

Dr. Cheadle Yorkshire is normally one of the most rational people on campus, especially of those working in the experimental medical labs. Leorio thanks every deity he knows on a regular basis that he managed to convince her that he’s worth the time and money required for him to work with her. She’s honorable, trustworthy, and the best doctor working on viral pathologies in Yorknew City, if not the entire country.

Most of the time, she’s also incredibly patient with her minions, including head minion Leorio Paladiknight. She’d even helped him find an apartment near campus, complete with roommate and perpetual ball of sunshine Gon Freecss. Until this month, she’d helped him study, or at least given him pointed suggestions of what to focus on in lecture or in the operating room. But with the death of now-former university president Isaac Netero and her promotion to acting president, Cheadle’s temper has shortened in direct correlation with how little sleep she’s gotten. Between her teaching, her old duties as head of the medical department, three separate patents undergoing review, and the duties President Netero was supposed to have done but never actually finished…

From across the room, Cheadle’s voice rises in a cacophonic shout, making Leorio’s stack of books and notes shake precipitously. “What do you _mean_ his office is locked?” An undergrad braver than the others mumbles something, and Cheadle’s voice rises exponentially. _“What do you mean_ **_Pariston told you?_ ** ”

Both Mizaistrom and Leorio pale. “She’s going to realize I’m still here and didn’t bring my lockpicks, and then I’m going to die,” Leorio says. “If this exam doesn’t kill me, Dr. Yorkshire will. And if she doesn’t, the university will suspend my funding, and that’ll kill me just as dead.”

Mizaistrom sighs, his forehead wrinkling. “Look. I like you, Paladiknight.”

“No one else seems to,” Leorio grumbles.

That wins him a dry snort. “Don’t tell Gon that, or you’ll end up with more lunch boxes than you can carry. And Cheadle likes you too. She wouldn’t have made you take time off to study if she didn’t want you to succeed.”

“That’s why I’m locked in here on the shortest day of the year instead of hiding under the blankets at home with a pot of Gon’s cocoa.” Even the thought of his roommate’s near-supernatural chocolate blessings descended straight from the gods of Gon’s job at the Yorknew City Greenhouse is enough to make Leorio want to head for the door, frozen hellscape of winter be damned.

“Technically, tomorrow is the shortest day of the year.”

“Stop bugging me and leave me to cram everything I can about virology into my brain.”

Mizaistrom looks like he’s arguing with himself. “If it gets you out of the lab for the rest of the night, I can help you.”

“The exam is _tomorrow_ and I’ve done nothing but move boxes all week,” Leorio says. “I’m going to fail. So unless you have a book that magically has all the answers, leave me here to suffer until Cheadle comes for me.”

Something about that makes Mizai laugh, or at least the Mizaistrom version of a laugh that’s closer to a quiet puff of air and a crinkle to his eyes. The lawyer pulls out the small stack of cards he always seems to have on him, selecting a bright yellow one and scribbling something on it. “I have a friend of a friend that should help you,” he says. “Go to the Fourth Street Library and ask for Melody. She’l know which book to check out, and then you can go home and study.”

Leorio frowns, but takes the card. Mizaistrom’s handwriting is terrible on the best of days, but this looks more like a collection of runes than actual words. He can just barely make out _Fourth Street_ and _medical mumbo jumbo,_ along with a terrible sketch of Leorio. His fashionably small glasses and devilishly spiked black hair has been turned into a scribbled mess over what could be a tie but is just as likely a sword. He doesn’t know if he should be offended. “This sounds too good to be true,” he says instead.

“Melody’s good with finding the right answers. And it’s also a favor. My...friend owes me.” Mizaistrom stoops to pick up his boxes again, nearly knocking his black and white hat to the floor in the process. “You must promise you’ll check the book out and take it somewhere else to study. They are closing early tonight and have strict closing policies.”

“Yeah, sure.” If anyone knows about law and policy, it’s Mizaistrom. Leorio stands and groans as his back pops and cracks like he’s in his fifties and not his twenties. All of the moving and lifting has been as bad for his body as for Cheadle’s nerves. “Thanks, Mizai.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You need to pass your test so I don’t have to fend off President Yorkshire by myself once she’s finished with the undergrads.”

Leorio laughs. “That’s the deal, then?”

Mizaistrom nods solemnly. “Now get going. You don’t want to be locked in, especially not tonight.”

* * *

In the last year, Leorio has learned more than he ever thought he could about medicine and researching viral cures, and that’s all thanks to Dr. Cheadle Yorkshire. The head of the Yorknew Medical School with degrees in virology, biochemisty, and immunology, Cheadle is possibly the smartest person knows. She brings a calm, dogged presence to her labs and classes, the same drive that’s led to Yorknew’s cutting-edge successes in curing the incurable. Normally, Cheadle doesn’t take on students--even before becoming university president last month, Cheadle’s workload is closer to that of ten professors. But something about Leorio won her over.

Leorio likes to think it’s his confident personality and steady hands in the operating room, his determination in throwing himself into his work, maybe even his potential as a future doctor. Gon, who’s known Dr. Yorkshire for years through his work at the greenhouse, says it’s because she needed someone to do all her paperwork. (He’s not _wrong_ \--as much as Leorio’s learned about medicine, he’s learned twice as much about paperwork and red tape on administrative levels.)

Gon’s best friend and co-conspirator-slash-boyfriend Killua Zoldyck thinks Cheadle hired him because Leorio is dirt poor, desperately needs the funding and would do any sort of work for it, and can pick locks. (To Leorio’s chagrin, he’s _also_ not wrong. For an undergrad floating between majors, Killua is far too perceptive, but he’s also an asshole to everyone not named Gon.)

Leorio came to Yorknew University to learn how to heal people, because he doesn’t want to watch people he loves die in front of his useless eyes. His meager funds, even supported by scholarships cobbled together from anywhere he could manage, only did so much--getting into a lab, any lab, that would support him is still one of the crowning achievements of Leorio’s career. And he snuck his way into _Cheadle’s._ Leorio might be pretty low in the pecking order. But somewhere between lugging boxes of experiments and forms, wrangling undergrads that behave worse than soaked cats, and editing reports until his eyes burn...he’s learning. A lot. One day, maybe he’ll have learned enough.

If he doesn’t flunk out of the program first by failing one of the biggest exams of his life. Or get crushed under a pile of moving boxes.

Which is how he ends up outside the Fourth Street Library at four o’clock in the afternoon, half-frozen from the mid-December cold spell. The americano he’d bought at the campus coffee shop only does so much, not least because it’s been more than half an hour since leaving the university’s grounds and it has long since turned into an iced americano. Leorio’s never been to this part of town, either--and between the frozen wind under steel gray skies, the dead trees stretched across the narrow hilly one-way street like bony fingers, and the dark brick and stonework making up the entire block, he almost wishes he’d never come.

His phone buzzes, and Leorio nearly drops the ice that used to be coffee onto the ground as he fumbles his phone to read his roommate’s message. [ _home 4 dinr?_ ]

Leorio feels a small smile crack his face. It’s nice to know Gon cares. [ _studying at the library. save me a plate?_ ]

The reply is almost instant, far faster than Gon usually types--by process of elimination, it must be Killua, who must be staying over. Again. [ _it_ _’s a good thing gon likes you, old man. we’re picking up my sister after we finish eating, so eat whatever’s left.]_

Right, Killua’s mythical sister. All Leorio knows about her is that the family Killua’s worked so hard to avoid works even harder to make her life miserable, and that Killua loves her more than almost anyone. But she’s also supposed to be staying with Killua in his _dorm_  until her new housing is arranged. It’s bad enough Killua practically lives with them now, down to chipping in for the food budget and electricity, without adding yet another head to the lease. Leorio sends that in as angry of a text as he can manage with his fingers trembling almost too hard to hit the keys, and all he gets back is a poop emoji and a [ _good luck leorio!!!_ ]. Stupid teenagers. Leorio’s glad they have each other, but they also amplify everything about one another--especially when it comes to stupid text messaging. He almost misses the days when Gon would just call for everything.

The library looms before him, four narrow stories of red brick so dark it might be gray beneath the snow. It sits at the top of the street, taller than the surrounding buildings like a castle on top of a moor of concrete. The front steps sink into the sidewalk in unbroken slabs of concrete, iron rails wrought in the shape of leaves and thorny viles that loop around the top. Massive windows take up the majority of the front facade, hints of stained glass barricaded by wooden panels. Trying to peek through the cracks in the wood reveals nothing but deep burgundy velvet and maybe some warm light inside.

In green-tinged metal over the doors, two thick pieces of oak will dull brass knobs, reads _Fourth Street Library_.

Leorio feels unwelcome and very, very small. But more than that, Leorio feels really damn cold.

“Dammit Mizaistrom,” he mutters. “This is more like a haunted house than a library.”

As though it can hear him, the boards over the windows creak ominously in the wind. Leorio glares at the building.

It stares blankly at him.

Because it’s a building.

But it _feels_ like it’s glaring back.

Leorio curses again and shoves at the door. It gives unwillingly, as though the doors are stuck together with chewing gum.

The warmth hits him before the sight of the softly illuminated front hall. The small lobby’s front desk, almost as tall as Leorio’s shoulder, has both an index card holder and an antiquated-looking desktop. Neither are being used by the small, balding woman reading over what looks like sheet music, plump fingers gentle and slow against the browning pages.

She looks up at the sound of Leorio’s footsteps, beady black eyes crinkling in a pleasant smile. “We didn’t expect anyone today,” she says, voice quiet but somehow echoing around the room. “I assume it must be urgent, given the date. Can I help you?”

Leorio starts. “Oh, uh. Yeah,” he says, digging into the pockets of his suit jacket. “I’m looking for Melody?”

The woman’s smile doesn’t change, but it seems more guarded. Something about the straightening of her shoulders, maybe? She holds her hand out. “That would be me,” she says. “Your referral, please.”

Leorio hands over Mizaistrom’s note, trying vainly to smooth out the crumpled paper as he does. “I’m with Dr. Yorkshire’s lab in the main campus. I was told you’d know what to find?”

“Ah, Counselor Nana sent you,” Melody says. She turns to the index roll, flipping through it deftly. “It’s rare he looks for anything now that he’s finished his training as the university liaison. How has he been?”

What sort of books did Mizai need this far from the law library? Maybe he got his exercise running back and forth between campus and all the way out here, rather than Leorio’s usual box-lifting. Things to ask about later, after cramming his head full of medical facts. Leorio tries his best smile, leaning against the desk to try to get a look at the index cards. “Mizai’s doing good, when Dr. Yorkshire’s not making him use his law degree to carry boxes of Netero’s old shit.”

Melody laughs softly, the bell-like sound filling the lobby despite the relative size of her body and how muffled Leorio’s own voice is. “I’m sure he’s enjoying it more than he lets on. Counselor Nana has always seemed the sort to be more hands on.” Finding the index card she needs, she turns to the filing cabinets behind her. “Do you know exactly what he is looking for, as he requested?”

Leorio says, “It’s not for him. I’m supposed to ask you to help me find something to help me study for my exam tomorrow. I can give you a few references if you need them, I have a few ideas about where Dr. Yorkshire’s been going…”

Melody shakes her head and pulls open another drawer. “That’s quite alright. Although, are you certain you want to look here? We aren’t exactly a medical library.”

Leorio sighs. He knew this was a bad idea. Although he’s really not looking forward to freezing again, or braving the boxes. Or Cheadle. Maybe he can go home and convince Gon to take the exam for him. His roommate has the day off from work tomorrow, with the greenhouse being closed and Killua finished with exams. That can’t possibly be the worst idea. “I can just go back to campus. It’s not a big deal. But Mizai said you’d know what book I have to check out. His friend owes him a favor.”

This makes Melody straighten sharply, her dark eyes sparkling with something mischievous. “You should have said so,” she says, and hopes off the chair. She vanishes entire behind the desk, her hand reappearing to fish for the stack of sheet music and the rolodex. Leorio hands them both down to her, and she rewards him with a smile as she reappears from around the desk. She is _really_ short, even moreso standing next to the very tall Leorio, and she’s built like a dumpling, balding spot shining on the crown of her head. “Thank you, Leorio.”

She toddles off, flipping through the index cards as she walks. Leorio stands awkwardly at the lobby desk, coat slung over his arm and unsure if he should be doing anything.

Melody pauses at the door. “Please follow me. I think I know what you’re looking for, but it is a bit far into the stacks. I wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

That’s possibly an insult--Leorio has a very good sense of direction, thank you very much; a library may be dark and dusty but he’s never actually gotten _lost_ in one--but Melody says it so pleasantly that Leorio can’t bring himself to protest. He rushes to catch up, crossing the lobby with only a few long strides and entering the next room.

And then he stops and stares. Because whatever he’d expected, it isn’t this. Massive arching ceilings, as tall as the building itself, swoop far above Leorio’s head, where skylights made of thick warped glass covered in snow and dust filter the whole room with blue-tinged light. The beams are ornately decorated with the same vines as the metal railings outside, twisting around the wood like living things before draping down onto the walls and staircases built into the sides of the shelves. Under Leorio’s feet, the floor is bronzy wood polished to a shine, covered in carpets in every color imaginable where it’s not covered in haphazard stacks of notebooks and papers and tomes of all shapes and sizes.

And the books…

If Leorio began counting books now, perhaps he could finish in a hundred years. The whole room is filled, floor to ceiling, with massive bookshelves, stuffed with books in every shape and size, many in languages Leorio recognizes immediately and some scrawled with what might as well be gibberish. Some are plain paperbacks, library call signs stamped into their spines in computer-printed numbers. Some are leather thicker than Leorio’s wrist, glossy letters embossed onto their surface or metallic script half-peeled and illegible. Some don’t seem to have titles at all, and others seem to have nothing but words on their covers as though they just begin with no end. Leorio knows he can see the opposite wall, and the ceiling, and the walls, but the expansive center aisle contrasted with the too-narrow space between the shelves, makes it feel like the books go on forever, melding into each other and their shelves.

It feels like everything ever written in the world, every page, every word, might be shelved somewhere in here. It’s an impossible thought, but for a moment, it seems anything is possible, and enormous, and horrifyingly unknowable.

Melody bumps Leorio’s arm, and he jolts, unaware he’d frozen in the doorframe. The room feels like it shrinks back down to a manageable level, still big but not _huge._ What a bizarre daydream from working too much and sleeping too little. Leorio shakes his head to clear the image of the neverending books from his mind. With that much knowledge, he’d never finish studying.

That is a much more terrifying thought than any unending library.

“Your book should be this way,” Melody says, tugging Leorio gently by the sleeve. After the first few steps, she lets him go, as though satisfied she’s not going to leave him behind again.

He’s not going to get lost in a damn library. Even one he keeps trying to wander down the wrong stacks, distracted by a golden glimmer of text or a bobbing silver light in the distance. It’s disorienting, to say the least.

“Have you worked here long?” he asks Melody to try to ignore the seasick nausea at the edge of his stomach.

She smiles, motioning Leorio to follow her down a wider aisle. “No longer than anyone else. I’m primarily based out of the music library, but it’s a busy night.”

Leorio has seen no one but the two of them since he got off the bus, let alone in the library itself. “Doesn’t seem too bad now,” he says.

Her smile widens as though he’s said something hilarious. “It is why we are closing early tonight. An end of season party of sorts.”

“Librarians throw crazy parties, I’m sure.”

Melody laughs, the same bell chime echoing through the dusty room and off the books, almost like there are a dozen of her in chorus. “I’ll be playing a flute piece tonight,” she says, and reaches up for a shelf just over her head. “It is by invitation only, or I would ask if you would like to join us.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I should probably focus on passing my exam,” Leorio says.

“That is the deal, is it not.” Leorio doesn’t see her pluck out the textbook from the shelves, but he’s distracted by a book on blood clots that shines with prismatic light where the late afternoon sunlight hits its inscription. “Will you check this out?”

Leorio pulls his hand away from the other book, an odd discharge like static sparking against his fingers. “Can I look it over first?” he says.

“Of course. You’ll likely want a reading room. This collection is sometimes a little distracting, I think. It’s easy to be enthusiastic about new things.” Melody tucks the book under her arm and bustles back out of the room before Leorio has time to protest or look around anymore.

After the grandeur of the stacks, the reading room is almost distractingly normal. A simple heavy wooden table with a few chairs of varying degrees of comfort are scattered around the small room, shelves full not with prismatic volumes but ordinary binders, pens, and papers. There’s even a small coffee pot plugged into the wall and bubbling away happily.

“Come and see me when you are ready to check out,” Melody says, handing the book over. The cover is unhelpfully titled _Compendium,_ the word printed in thick black ink onto a cheap paper cover. It’s heavier than it looks, nearly an inch thick with pages so thin they should rip with every turn. Leorio carefully flips to the index, eyebrows reaching higher and higher with every entry. This thing has _everything._ How did Mizai know this was what he’s been looking for? Can he just keep it for the rest of the year? Or, well, the class is over after tomorrow.

Melody hums politely, and Leorio drags his attention away from the charts. “I will be back in the lobby, if you need anything.”

“Deal.” Somewhere outside of the diagrams and Latin, he hears Melody laugh softly as she closes the door.

Leorio dumps his things in one of the chairs and takes out his pens. It’s going to be a long night.

* * *

“Excuse me, sir, but we’re about to close. I need to see your invitation and permissions for this evening.”

Leorio jolts awake at the voice, sending several hours’ worth of papers tumbling off his lap and into a puddle of cold coffee. The treasonous remnants of his caffeine soak into the notes, staining what few legible sections he has and making the rest of the ink begin to run.

Standing over him is a gorgeous blond man, blue collared shirt immaculately pressed and red earring dangling off a thin golden chain. He fits right in with the softly lit wooden shelves and the leather-bound hardcovers, clashing only with the plastic binders and cheap ballpoint pens Leorio’s been using. He has a look of consummate professionalism belied only by the way he bites his bottom lip as though trying to not laugh at Leorio tripping over his own limbs without even standing. It’s a really good look on him, gray eyes dancing.

Leorio wishes he could sink right back into his chair, or maybe into the floor. “What time is it?”

The blond (librarian? Leorio isn’t completely sure, Melody seemed like she was the only one on staff before the “party”) makes a show of fishing out a pocketwatch from the inside of his sleeve, attached to the wrist by a set of silver chains. It glints with the same red as his earring. “Sunset,” he says, snapping the watch shut.

“I’m not a sundial, I have no idea what that means,” Leorio says.

Lips twitch in a small smile. “It is as I said. If you don’t have your documents in order, you will need to leave. Preferably by the front door, to avoid traffic.”

“These are the only documents I have,” Leorio says, and motions at the destroyed notes sprawled out in front of him and across the floor. The librarian’s smile sharpens a little, and not in a support sort of _Yes of course I understand, you can stay_ way. Leorio groans. “Look, can I just stay a few more hours? I know I missed the checkout window, but this is really important.”

“Perhaps at a hotel, that would work. But this is not a hotel. We are closing for the night. Those are the Rules.” Leorio’s not sure how, but he can hear the word capitalized.

“Rules. Yeah.” Some people have to sleep, like normal people, or attend raves between the bookshelves or however it is librarians party. Other people are idiots who have to cram for massive exams that won’t bother their advisor-turned-campus-terror. His notes are probably a lost cause at this point, but Leorio sets to trying to collect them anyways. Hopefully all the cramming he did before passing out has soaked into his brain with the same efficacy as the coffee into the pages, because there’s no way he’s going to be able to read these later. “I didn’t know libraries had rules other than Be Quiet and Don’t Write In The Books.”

The blond rests his hands on his hips, sighing in a way that reminds Leorio of his elderly bio professor from undergrad. “Most places have plenty of unspoken rules. I--we are, as I mentioned, particularly unique with ours on nights like tonight.”

“Can you tell me the rules?”

“You should know them if you are here.”

Leorio’s too tired for this. “Well, I don’t,” he says. “I’m just here to study.”

“Frankly, this is a terrible night for studying.”

“Tell that to my advisor. She’s the one who chose the exam date.”

“But how did…” The blond pauses. “I did not let you in, correct? Or authorize your entrance?”

What a stupid question. Leorio drops his notes onto the heavy wooden table. They land with a muffled thump and a burst of dust that flickers in the lamp light. “No, it was the nice woman in the front lobby. Melody, right? She helped me find this textbook--” A book which is sitting in the same pile of fallen papers currently soaked through with coffee. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, I think coffee got onto the book too.”

The blond librarian mutters something that might be a curse. But before Leorio can decipher it, he stoops to the ground to pick up the rest of Leorio’s papers. “You really must leave now.”

Leorio blanches. “Look, I’m sorry about the book. It probably saved my grade. If you need a replacement, I’ll pay…” The memory of his very empty wallet and nearly-overdrawn credit account make him trail off. Cute librarians notwithstanding, he still needs rent money to make sure Gon isn’t covering the whole thing, and textbooks are never cheap. “I’ll pay soon?”

“The book is not the most immediate problem. The sun is setting and you must be gone.”

“This makes no sense!”

The blond shoots up to full height, the top of his head not even making it to Leorio’s chin. It doesn’t stop the gray-eyed glare from being incredibly effective. “It would if you had followed the Rules,” he grinds out through his teeth. “The most important one being that you have no invitation, so you cannot be here. Take your things and leave.”

“My notes--”

The stack is thrust into Leorio’s hands. “Are all here.”

“What about--”

The blond lets out what sounds like a growl, and begins to bodily shove Leorio towards the study room’s door. Leorio nearly falls flat on his face at the force. The blond is much stronger than Leorio would have guessed.

The door takes them straight back to the lobby, seeming to bypass the stacks entirely as Leorio scrambles to keep all his papers from tumbling back to the floor. The movement seems to piss the blond off even more. “Can I at least pay for the damn book?”

“Leave!” the blond snaps, and points at the massive oak doors, book in question tucked firmly under an arm.

See if Leorio ever comes back to this library if this asshole is on staff. “Fine,” he grumbles, making a show of dusting off his sleeves. “Thanks for nothing.” He strides over to the entrance, enjoying how his long legs take him away from the cute but awful librarian in only a few steps, and shoves at the door.

It’s locked.

He jiggles the door handles again, hard enough to break anything less sturdy. It barely moves.

Between the librarian’s glare and the moonlight filtering through the front windows, it feels like the universe is laughing at him.

“You cannot stay,” the librarian says like a broken record.

“I’m not trying to,” Leorio snaps. “The door’s locked.”

He can feel the blond’s eyes rolling from across the room, even before he appears under Leorio’s elbow to shove at the doors himself.

They don’t even budge.

Leorio and the blond glance at each other, the librarian’s eyes reflecting the red of his earring. Leorio tries to not give him a told-you-so grin stolen from Killua’s repertoire of shit-eating expressions. “I guess I’m staying?”

“No, you are not. You are leaving.” The blond digs into his sleeve again, pulling out an ornate golden keychain from the same place the pocketwatch had been.

Leorio is pretty sure both of these heavy metal objects would not fit in the narrow sleeve. “Are you a magician?” he asks.

The blond nearly drops the keys with a noise almost like a snort. “That is a foolish question,” he says, fumbling through the keys until evidently finding the right one. The metal rings like tiny bells as the keys hit each other.

“Foolish like not knowing rules I was never told?”

The door unlocks and groans open, hinges creaking. Leorio shudders against the burst of cold air. “Foolish because you seem to be very foolish,” the blond says.

Leorio glares downward, trying to use his height advantage to make himself as imposing and threatening and not foolish as possible. The blond stares back placidly and holds out a hand as though indicating some grand avenue and not a gray street on a gray frozen night.

“Thanks a lot,” Leorio says, and walks out.

The door slams shut on his face.

Leorio curses violently, jumping back and grabbing onto his nose. “What was that for?” he demands, voice high and nasally.

The librarian looks as shocked as Leorio feels. “The sun’s set,” he says as though it explains everything.

“No shit, it’s dark outside. What does that have to do with you closing the door on me? I thought you wanted me gone.”

“No, I…” He tries his key in the lock again. This time, it barely even moves. “It’s midwinter tomorrow. The Solstice.”

“So?”

“The library’s Crossroads will be at their peak tonight. You’re stuck inside until we can find you an exit. We can’t have an uniformed human running around haphazardly, who knows what you will get into.”

Despite how it feels like his nose is three times too big for his face, it’s not broken or bleeding. It means Leorio can focus on the inane words coming out of the librarian’s mouth. “Don’t you have a back door or something?”

“Not quite.” He pauses, reconsidering. “At least, not tonight.”

“You want me gone, and now I can’t leave. Make up your mind so I can go and study and not fail my test and be murdered by my advisor.”

“You truly have no idea, do you,” the librarian says, laughter glinting in red-tinged eyes. “You’re at the greatest convergence of the Fae Roads in Yorknew, on one of the most magically powerful nights of the year. And I believe the library has decided it is closed to the human world for the night.”

Um. What. “Fae Roads? Like, magic fairies? With wings and wands and glitter?”

“Usually not quite so dramatic.” The librarian stares at his keychain as though betrayed, and he tucks it back into his sleeve with a sigh. “Come with me, I will do my best to explain what I can.”

Leorio stares at the blond. “But what about my exam?” he says weakly.

All he gets in response is a choked laugh and a tug at his wrist, strong fingers dragging him along behind him as the librarian continues to laugh, a bright noise that makes him seem even younger than Leorio.

What the fuck is going on.


	2. Now Far Ahead The Road Has Gone

The librarian’s hand is hot against Leorio’s wrist as he’s dragged back across the tiny lobby and into the massive vault of a room Melody had taken him through only hours before. Without the blue-tinged light from the skylights, it seems as though the whole place has been shrouded in velvet, the air soft and dusty and too close. At least it’s not undergoing another optical illusion to make it seem like the room never ends. Leorio’s head is spinning too hard to really handle that again just now.

Also helping is that they reach the other side of the room quickly, the blond’s shiny black shoes clacking smartly against the wood. Leorio reorients himself as the librarian pulls out his keyring, this time selecting a small brass key that is unremarkable except for the tiny red gemstone embedded at one end. “With the library formally closed, the rest of the Roads should be opening shortly. We have enough time for me to answer enough of your questions to not get yourself killed or worse.”

“What, is someone going to shove a bookshelf on me? I haven’t pissed anyone off yet.” A blond eyebrow arches towards the librarian’s hairline. Leorio has a sudden urge to stick his tongue out like a petulant kid. Or his roommate. “If I’m pissing you off, please tell me, I don’t want to be crushed by the stacks on top of being locked in the library.”

“At the moment, I’m only considering it.” The door clicks softly, and the librarian drops Leorio’s wrist to step into the dimly lit office much like the reading room Leorio’d woken up in, on a far smaller scale. The heavy wooden desk and rich red cushions somehow don’t clash with the ergonomic desk chair, messy stacks of notes and archaic-looking books with scrawls for titles occupying whatever space isn’t taken up by a sleek computer covered in post-its. Scattered across the top of the filing cabinets are a mess of objects that wouldn’t look out of place in a treasure hunter’s castoffs, a pile of scrolls and a couple of miniature statues with limbs broken off and an assortment of vaguely creepy gilded masks.

“My apologies for the mess, I am completing a project this evening and was not expecting...visitors.” The librarians hoists a pile of books half as tall as he is off a second chair, carefully plopping them down on the floor behind his desk. Dust scatters as the pages flutter. 

Judging by the mess and the...somewhat hilarious detective show-style chalkboard scrawled with what might be a mathematical equation but looks more like an eldritch horror is about to spawn through it, the librarian hasn’t had guests in weeks. “Are you planning on summoning the bloody hellspawn of a distant dimension with that?” Leorio hears himself say.

The papers being reorganized on the librarian’s desk are set down with considerably less attention to their well-being than those that had been on Leorio’s chair. “First, although you clearly are unaware, summoning does not work like that and is infinitely more complex than you are able to understand at this moment. Second, I have invited you into my office. Behave yourself.”

“I am behaving, you should be more courteous!” Leorio says, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning forward to make up for how the librarian is, for the moment, taller. “Especially since you locked me in here.”

The librarian takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and apparently counting to seventeen, since that’s how far Leorio gets before he speaks. “You are free to leave this room whenever you like.”

“Then why am I here and not freezing outside at the bus stop over on tenth? Which is how far away the closest stop is, in case you ever leave and  _ don’t _ spend your nights locking innocent patrons in the lobby.”

For some reason, the librarian seems to find this funny. “There are many other ways of getting around, and we have Roads open to us that might be otherwise hidden to the municipal planning committee. The Crossroads are dangerous for humans, particularly on the solstice.”

It’s Leorio’s turn to count his breaths--twenty-seven, because between the confusion, the exam stress, and the way his nose is still throbbing (it  _ is _ swollen, dammit, at least it’s not broken), it’s more impressive that he hasn’t simply tried to run through any of the sturdy wooden doors. When he’s done, the librarian is pouring boiling water into a simple teacup, the smell of mint and chamomile filling the dusty air. 

Leorio takes another deep breath, centering himself. He’s calm. He’s collected. The librarian takes a slow sip, blond eyebrow rising. “Human?!” Leorio blurts, utterly incredulous, and the librarian splurts tea over the rim of his mug.

Okay, so. Not really calm or collected. 

The librarian pulls out a handkerchief--maybe from the same damn alternate dimension he must keep up his sleeve, overflowing with keychains--and begins to mop up the puddle on his desk. All Leorio has to offer is his ratty old scarf, tugged out from where he’d stuffed it in his briefcase, but it’s waved away irritably. “You are human, correct?”

“And you’re not?”

“Obviously.”

“Not obviously!”

The librarian flicks his handkerchief before tucking it back into his sleeve. It vanishes, the sleeve undisturbed and not even unbuttoned. “I’d think you would have checked to see where you were before visiting.”

A pulsing headache starts in Leorio’s temples, and the way it’s making him grind his teeth is a terrible stress reflex. “Can I at least call my roommate? He’s going to be worried.” 

“I’m afraid that won’t work.” Leorio scowls and fishes his phone out of his pocket, daring technology to prove him wrong. Instead, his lock screen--usually a picture of his labmates, plus Gon and Killua, at Cheadle’s fall picnic following the not-annual food fight that had broken out between the undergrads--displays nothing but a blue screen, snow quietly falling around the time. Which reads 42:97am. 

“It’s the Solstice,” the librarian says, and shows Leorio his own phone. The gray asphalt roads on the simple screen are covered in a collection of bright red stop signs instead of even a time or date. “Until sunset tomorrow, the only way in and out is through the Roads, and they will be extremely busy for the next several hours.”

Leorio turns his phone off and back on again. This time, it’s an empty snow-filled jungle at 81:18pm. “Do you know anything about phones?” he asks.

“Not enough to fix a temporal disturbance on this scale. I can explain what is going on, if you’d like.”

“ _ Please _ .” It’s hard to not beg, but Leorio’s willing to do almost anything at this point to clear up whatever the hell is going on.

The librarian takes a long sip of fragrant tea. It smells like something out of Gon’s stash, summery and bright despite the midwinter freeze. Leorio wishes he had his coffee still, or even some of Gon’s infamous hot cocoa, just to have something warm to hold. “Put simply, the Fourth Street Library has two functions. The first is as a bastion of knowledge. This collection in particular dates back to the founding of Yorknew, although our focus is on more cutting-edge finds these days.”

“What about those?” Leorio asks, pointing at the pile of books with lettering so old the gilding is peeling off. It’s impossible to make out the titles of the books, even from squinting at the text. 

The hand covered in metal chains flattens down over the offending volumes. “More cutting-edge than you would expect,” he says. “And those that are not, may yet prove useful to others.”

“Oh, they're classics, the stuff no one reads anymore but is where everything started ,” Leorio says.

The librarian’s blond eyebrows rise briefly. “Somewhat,” he says. “I’m...surprised you understand.”

Leorio feels like he should be offended. “I  _ am _ a med student. All I do is study, lock myself in labs, and drink coffee.”

That gets him a brief chuckle, and the librarian pushes one of the books in Leorio’s direction. “Perhaps later, you might find this interesting. It’s not quite up to the Compendium’s level, but it does go into more specifics about viral cures.”

“The Compend—what?”

The  _ you idiot _ look is back. It seems to be the librarian’s preferred expression. “The textbook you were studying. The one you have damaged somewhat drastically.” 

Leorio rubs the back of his neck, trying to laugh it off. “Right, um. I am still really sorry about that.”

The apology is waved off. “It is not the worst damage the Compendium has ever seen. If it couldn’t handle some misspilled liquid, it wouldn’t have lasted the last two hundred years. I’m more concerned with how you located it. It’s not exactly well-known, even in these circles.” 

Not a few hours earlier, Leorio had been reading from this supposedly centuries-old book, articles that had been released in journals barely six months ago. Two hundred years ago, no one had even  _ seen _ a virus. People would be dying of smallpox for another hundred years. And this Compendium outlines current studies on rotovirus vaccines, studies that are going on  _ right now. _ “But the stuff I was reading has only been in development for the last decade! How can it be in a book that old?” 

“It would be a sorry Compendium if it didn’t get regular updates,” the librarian says as though it is the most obvious thing in the world. “Thankfully, it also updates its appearance, unlike certain other tomes that prefer to be old and decrepit with odd smells.” 

It might be Leorio’s imagination, but at least two of the old leather tomes on the shelf behind the desk ruffle in a breeze. The librarian doesn’t pay it any attention.

“It does bring us to the other purpose of the library, however, and the reason you are unable to leave.” The librarian stands and reaches up to a filing cabinet that stretches from floor to ceiling in a dull office furniture sort of way, utterly at odds with the rest of the room. The drawer is almost at the top, making the librarian stand on his toes as he fishes into what looks like a mess of folders.

“You want help?” Leorio asks.

“No,” the librarian snaps, jumping a little to try to reach further. 

“You sure? Gotta use all this height and muscles for something,” Leorio says.

“ _ Something _ , if you will not use your brain.” The librarian finally snags what he was looking for, fishing out a notebook and motioning Leorio over to the desk. He begins to draw a sketch of squares and circles. “Do you know what this is?”

Leorio stares at the drawing. It looks like a childish house, with squiggles and boxes around it until it looks less like a drawing and more like an optical illusion. “Someone with too much time on his hands?”

The librarian sighs heavily and pulls out a thin silver chain from his sleeve, wrapping it around the pen. “Perhaps this will be easier to understand.”

He drags the chain-covered pen through the air, eyebrows pulled together in concentration. A sparkling line of black smoke follows where the pen goes, as though he’s drawing on an easel instead of on nothing. Leorio’s eyes widen and he scrambles backwards, pressing himself against the chair. “What the hell is that?”

“A demonstration,” the librarian says as though it explains everything. Which it does not. It explains even less. “Relax. It won’t hurt.”

“That’s what you say when it  _ does _ .”

“I can make it hurt, if you prefer?”

Leorio studies the librarian, hoping that the amusement he sees in his eyes is because he finds this funny, not because he’s seriously contemplating hurting Leorio. “Not usually my sort of thing, thanks.”

There’s a noise almost like a choke, and the line the librarian is drawing grows an erratic squiggle in the middle of its nearly perfectly aligned fog. If Leorio didn't know better, he'd say the librarian was flustered. He pauses for a moment, and then draws a larger circle around the mess about as wide as his hand. It glows briefly silver, and then sinks into the air. A feeling of dusty books flows out on an autumn breeze, tossing a few papers and making the librarian’s bangs push back off his forehead. He picks up the Compendium and scowls. “Behave,” he mutters.

“What is--” Leorio starts to ask, before the librarian simply plunges the book into the hole, taking his hand with it. Nothing is left past the elbow but empty air and the librarian with his arm in a hole full of nothing as though this happens to him everyday. 

Leorio passes his own hand beneath the hole, looking for wires. 

Then he ducks his head behind it, trying to get a good look between the hole and the desk where the librarian’s notebooks still sit.

There’s nothing. Just...a hole in the air.

“Are you sure that doesn’t hurt?” Leorio asks.

The librarian smiles. “Would you like to see for yourself?”

“Not really,” Leorio starts, but his hand is grabbed and pulled into the hole as well. It doesn’t feel like anything, but his hand’s gone. Well, not  _ totally  _ gone--he can feel the librarian’s fingers tangled around his, and the metal chains dig into his palm almost painfully. And then there’s the feeling of leather, and paper, and the smell of ink and half-rotted pages, and Leorio grabs onto whatever it is on the other side and pulls.

The librarian takes his hand out with Leorio’s, raising an eyebrow at the leather-bound volume with gold letters curling across its front in Leorio’s hands. It reads  _ Compendium _ in the same font as the text he’d fallen asleep studying earlier. “It seems to have taken a liking to you,” the librarian says, caught between amusement and annoyance.

“But it’s a book!” Leorio shakes his head, then shakes out his arm. It’s still there. Pulse racing almost audibly and skin crawling with goosebumps, but there. “And that’s a… You made a hole?”

“A portal accessing the worldlines, or more commonly, the Roads,” the librarian says, collapsing the hole in the air with a flick of his wrist. The lines wobble precariously before vanishing as though they’d never been, leaving not even smoke. The librarian goes back to sketching on the paper, replicating the lines he’d drawn in the air on the page. “This library, as well as being a confluence of knowledge, is a confluence of Roads, the passages that connect everything together.”

“How can it connect to anything when the nearest bus stop is a twenty minute walk away?” Leorio asks. He immediately remembers the hole in the air and snaps his mouth shut before anything too stupid comes out immediately.

The librarian lets out another snort as he loops his pen around in another circle, emphasizing its start and end. “Think a little less physically,” he says. “The library exists as a Crossroads between many, a place where many Roads come together--some, like my reshelving portal, are spatially and temporally locked into the same plane. It goes to the stacks, most of the time. Others will take across realities, or time itself. Most of the year, the Crossroads is relatively benign, a place for the fae to rest for a moment, or for those who are lost to find where they must go.”

Leorio wants to ask what, exactly, someone would look for between realities—but  _ realities _ , his mind shorts out somewhat on that one. This is almost too much to worry about. It’s easier to focus on what he already understands and piece together the rest as he goes. “Most of the year? But tonight...is the Solstice?”

“Tomorrow, technically. But tonight is when the Roads are most crowded, at their greatest strength and strain. Likely because the Crossroads throws a massive party every year to celebrate, and it draws visitors from all over.” The librarian draws a firm line through the scribbles, ending back towards the drawing of the house. All of the previous lines seem to draw inwards, centered in on the little house as though looping back in towards it. “There are many worlds, many realities, but most of us are either from the human world or fae worlds. They are all present here tonight.”

Leorio frowns, trying to follow one of the loops with his eyes. It spins around itself, spiralling off into another before being broken by the thick black line, and he has to shake his head to stop his own mind from spinning. “So if I’m from this--the human world, where are you from?”

The pen stutters, ink blotting the line, before it picks up again. “One that can no longer be accessed, not by ordinary means.”

“These Road things don’t exactly seem ordinary.”

“Nor are they extraordinary, not for the fae like myself. In a way, I suppose I am stuck here just as much as you. Although not nearly so foolishly.”

Despite the harshness of the words, the librarian sounds apologetic. Leorio can’t bring himself to be angry. “Can I get out?” he asks. 

“Perhaps,” the librarian says. “Most Roads already exist, and all there needs to be done is to open a portal into it. Others, ones that have not yet been made, require a particular endpoint, a sort of grounding object to connect the place you are to the place you are going.”

“Kind of like the difference between a highway with on-ramps, and going offroading to a set of coordinates?” Leorio asks.

The librarian nods. “A crude but effective metaphor.”

“So I just have to find the right entrance? Since it’s not like I’m making Roads anytime soon.”

“Unless you are the most oblivious fae I have ever known, no. Humans cannot open portals themselves, and maintaining them requires a strong sense of will, or an equally strong grounding object.” 

It’s too bad Leorio doesn’t know what sort of grounding object he’d need to get home. Probably something of Gon’s, and something magicky. None of which Leorio has. “And what about you? If you have something from home, won’t you be able to build the right Road?”

There’s the sound of a sharp  _ crack _ , and ink spills over the librarian’s hand and the silver chains tied to his fingers. His face remains impassive as he pulls out a spare handkerchief, mopping up the stain before it hits the wood, but his knuckles are almost white around the fabric. “Unfortunately, it is nothing so simple,” the librarian says.

“But what about the...the ‘grounding object,’ if it’s your family, wouldn’t you--”

“You do  _ not _ understand.” Leorio wants to press, but the words are barbed and poisonous, and he’s fairly certain that if he tries to ask more, he’ll be gouged out and left to be lost forever between the references  _ stupid _ and  _ idiot _ . The librarian tosses away the ink-stained cloth and fishes out another pen, going back to scribbling on the miraculously untouched paper. He thickens a single circle that surrounds the little house but doesn’t touch it. “In order to accommodate such an influx of traffic, the library seals itself off from direct contact with the human world—the entrance through Fourth Street, technological communications. It prevents outside interference.”

Leorio swallows heavily. “If this isn’t the human world, then where are we now?”

“The library, of course.” The librarian smiles at a joke Leorio doesn’t get. “The search for knowledge often opens strange doors. The Crossroads exists at the center of all of them.”

“That makes no sense.”

The librarian sets his pen down and leans forward, the already air of the office growing close and dusty around him, as though heavy curtains have been pulled over a window against a sunny day. “Have you ever been in a library at the end of the day, when no one else is around, searching not for a specific textbook or a favorite novel, but merely browsing through the stacks, that you find yourself in between shelves you have never seen before, with titles that seem familiar but you know you’ve never read? That perhaps, if you search down the next aisle, you might discover a book that will answer all of your questions you didn’t know you were looking for?” The librarian stares into Leorio, gray eyes piercing as though they can peer beneath his skin and read words written on his bones. “Imagine that hundredfold, and that is where this library begins.”

Leorio swallows. 

The librarian taps on the paper again, and the room no longer feels three sizes too small. “Having a permanent place to stop or start makes travel easier, for those who travel between realities or worlds. It’s particularly useful for the fae, as humans cannot open or maintain a Road on their own. But it also makes times of great power more difficult to manage, so the library--the Crossroads typically takes precautions.”

“Like closing down the library with me in it.” 

“Precisely.”

Great. Just. Great. Leorio rubs at the ache behind his forehead. “Anything else I can actually do? Find a spaceship, recruit a dragon, maybe throw a rock through the front window to escape…?”

“You have two options,” the librarian says as though not listening to Leorio. “You can wait until tomorrow at sundown, when the solstice ends and the library reopens, barring any truly extenuating circumstances. That is the safest option for you, and there are plenty of facilities within the library that will keep you occupied, not least of which is the annual midwinter party in the Crossroads.”

“That’s not an option,” Leorio says. “I need to at least be at the exam, or my grade...my  _ job _ is forfeit. I can’t do that.” The thought of not being able to complete his training, to be thrown out of Cheadle’s lab...It’s the worst living nightmare Leorio can imagine.

“I figured as much.” The librarian traces the thick line he’s drawn across the center of the paper, dark and black even against the other loops. “Then you must take one of the Roads out. Most will be either too occupied or too fragile for you to take, however. Humans cannot open Roads, nor should you travel down one alone. Even certain fae have difficulty manifesting portals on their own. You would likely collapse the pathway, let alone what it might do to a human mind like yours.”

“Pretending I ignore how you keep saying ‘humans’ like we’re a weird species of talking bugs, which I’m not--how do we do that?”

The librarian says, “I am completing a personal project this evening, which will require me to check in on the Crossroads. The Solstice is something of a celebration for most, so there should be ample opportunity to find at least one Road out that will meet the necessary requirements, and someone willing to take you. I would make you one myself but I...cannot leave tonight.”

“Because of the party?”

“Something like that.” The librarian pulls out his pocketwatch from his sleeve again, checking the time or, hell, maybe he’s predicting the future. Leorio has no idea what clocks are supposed to do anymore, least of all ones that fit into slim fitted shirtsleeves. “I offer you a bargain, for the duration of the Solstice: I will help you find a safe way out of the Crossroads before dawn, if you agree to help me with my project while you are here.”

Leorio sighs and drops his head onto the librarian’s desk. The wood is cool and sturdy against his cheek, much more sensible than any of the words spilling out of the librarian’s mouth. Individually, they make sense. Taken as a whole, they morph into an indecipherable mess, like a page of notes fallen in a puddle of coffee and left until the letters run together. “You know, the last time I had exam stress dreams, I just talked about jacking off in front of my advisor and the rest of the medical staff. This is kind of outside my normal wheelhouse.”

“You’re not dreaming.” 

“A dream would tell me that. Especially a good looking dream librarian with gorgeous eyes.”

The librarian flushes a little pink. “That aside, you are not dreaming.” He reaches out and tweaks Leorio’s nose where it’s resting just above the desk. Eye-searing agony lances out from just below where his glasses rest, and Leorio shoves himself backwards to get away from the pain.

“Wha wa tha foh?” he demands.

“Proving my point.” The librarian reaches out to his face again, and Leorio tries to ward him off, scowling at the offending hand. “Calm down.”

“Nah if yoh jus gonna hur me agin. Yu sed yu wudnt hur me.”

“If you relax, I won’t hurt you at all.” That doesn’t sound like a promise to  _ not _ make this worse, but Leorio has no choice but to glare as a cool hand presses against his cheek. A thin chain appears out of the librarian’s sleeve, dangling from between their skin and down Leorio’s chin. The librarian closes his eyes in concentration, wrinkling his eyebrows together. Leorio’s nose throbs once, and then the pain dissipates as though it had never been there.

The librarian opens his eyes, and for a moment they shine a brilliant red, brighter than a stop light at 2am. Leorio blinks, and he’s back to looking into amused gray eyes. “See?” the librarian says.

He presses gently at the bridge of his nose, astonished at the lack of swelling. Healing.  _ Magical _ healing. If Leorio could learn this, maybe he could…

“Can you teach me how to do that?” he asks.

The librarian raises an eyebrow. “Typically, broken noses heal on their own. You wouldn’t need my help.”

Leorio shakes his head, wondering at how his head does not spin from pain. “No, I mean. How much can you heal? Can you fix broken bones? What about viral infections? Is there a limit on who you can help, or is there a way I--”

He’s cut off with an astonished laugh. “I can only do so much,” the librarian says, tucking a flyaway piece of hair behind his ear. Leorio’s train of thought-- _ magic healing holy shit _ \--is briefly derailed by the way the red gem in the librarian’s ear matches his gray eyes. “There is a system of sorts to magic, a give and take. There are Rules we must all follow. I only have what I am able to give.”

The librarian’s hand tightens under his chains, which briefly knock against each other, tinkling softly. “Taking things apart or destroying is simple. Healing something other than a simple break or wound takes intricate skill and hard-won knowledge.”

“But imagine what you could do! You could...you could cure cancer with the right spell, or--”

“There are rules,” the librarian says again, as though the repetition will make it true. “Never enter a place you did not create without its creator. Never leave anything of power in a place you will no longer be able to reach. Never accept something without knowing what will be requested in return. And never offer what you are not prepared to give.”

A thousand questions flood Leorio’s mind, most of them some variation on  _ If I know the right rules, can I heal too? _ He shakes the thought from his head. First, he needs to know the basics. And even if the librarian were helpful instead of an opaque jackass, he doesn’t even know the cost of such a thing. 

“Why are you helping me?” Leorio asks instead.

The haughty look the librarian has been holding cracks a little. “It is at least in part my fault you are stuck here,” he says, fiddling with a pen. “So you are at least in part my responsibility during the solstice. If nothing else, I would like to ensure you reach your exam on time.”

“Oh.” That is a far more altruistic answer than Leorio expected, with none of the implication that this might be Leorio’s fault. It’s nice, not to be blamed for something for once. “Uh. Thanks.”

“You may stay in my office, if you like. It will be safe enough.”

“And miss out on the biggest party of the season? I’d like to come with you.” The librarian smiles in delight before he can cover it up. It’s a very nice smile, making him seem younger and not like a thousand year old grouch buried in a young body. Leorio grins back, trying not to fiddle with the cuffs of his sleeves. “And besides, if the right road or Road is so hard to come by, wouldn’t it be better if I’m with you? So I can get out of your hair and back to med school world without too much trouble.”

“True,” he says. He marks something down on the notebook before closing it firmly and returning it to the filing cabinet. Leorio doesn’t comment this time when he stands on his tiptoes to pull down a heavy-looking brown leather bag the size of two palms cupped together. The librarian tucks it into his sleeve and turns back to Leorio as though he hasn’t added several pounds of weight to his arm. “Are you ready to leave? I have to take care of my project before dawn, as that is the point when the Crossroads will be at their greatest power.”

Leorio wants to ask about that, about why the librarian is so insistent on completing his project tonight, on what makes the power of the Solstice so powerful, on why the Crossroads are  _ here  _ and why Leorio’s never even heard of them before. Instead, he hears himself blurt out, “What’s your name?”

The librarian chokes on a breath. “I’m sorry, what?”

“That’s rude,” Leorio mutters. “I just wanted to know what your name is. I can’t run around saying  _ hey you! _ or  _ blond librarian asshole _ all night, that would be impolite.”

“It’s not exactly polite to demand someone’s name, either.”

Leorio ignores that. “Look, I’ll start. My name’s Leorio, I’m a second year med student at Yorknew University, I work as Dr. Yorkshire’s lab assistant, and I’m going to fail my exam in the morning because I got locked into a magic library. And you are…?”

The librarian’s gray eyes widen in a shocked smile. “Kurapika,” he says, as though he can’t keep the word from his lips.

Leorio smiles. “Kurapika,” he says, his accent catches on the Rs despite years of trying to lose it. The librarian opens his mouth and for once, no sound comes out. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Names are powerful things, Leorio.” But the smile stays, lighting up his whole face. “You are not curious about the Compendium? Or the library?”

“I guess? But your name is more important,” Leorio says. “Besides, I—“

A noise best described as jangly, electronic ocean waves erupts from Leorio’s pocket, and Kurapika starts so badly he knocks a stack of papers off his desk. “What in the hells is that?” he demands.

“It’s my phone,” Leorio says. “I think. That’s not my ringtone.”

Kurapika blanches. “That’s not possible,” he says.

“From how tonight’s going, I’d say anything’s possible,” Leorio says. The phone keeps ringing, noise slightly distorted as though coming through a long hollow tube. On the screen, rather than the snowy landscapes or impossible hours, the name on the screen reads NOT IN SERVICE.

Weird.

“You shouldn’t--” Kurapika starts to say, but Leorio’s too curious to not press the flashing green button. “...do that.”

“Hello?” Leorio says cautiously.

“ _ WHERE ARE YOU LEORIO?! _ ” Gon’s voice screeches out of the phone, loud enough that Leorio has to pull the phone away from his ear. 

Kurapika covers his ears, wincing as Gon keeps yelling nearly unintelligible nonsense about dinner and families. “Who is that?” he says, voice strained.

“My roommate,” Leorio says. His ears are ringing. How does Gon do that?

“How is he getting through?  _ Nothing _ gets in or out, the Solstice interferes with too much—“

“ _ Old man, can you answer or something? Gon’s been really worried you won’t respond to his texts. _ ” 

“I’m here, I’m fine,” Leorio says. 

Gon shouts something almost entirely drowned out by Killua saying, “ _ Fucking finally. Gon wants to know where you are. We got a little stuck getting Alluka, so might be later than we thought. _ ”

“I’m still at the library,” Leorio says. “Who’s Alluka?”

“ _ You shouldn’t... _ ” Killua’s voice drifts off into static, indecipherable for a long moment. There’s a yelp from the other end of the line, and the noise clears. “ _ Which library? _ ”

Kurapika shakes his head firmly, as though trying to tell Leorio to not say anything more. Leorio ignores that. “Fourth Street, just like this afternoon.” He glances around the room, remembers everything that’s happened so far. “I think.”

Killua sucks in a deep breath and says something to Gon that includes the words  _ dumbass we don’t have time _ . Why is it that everyone thinks Leorio would know anything about tonight other than the exam he’s supposed to take in the morning? An exam he may just resign himself to failing.

How would he explain this to Cheadle, anyways? “Hi Dr. Yorkshire,” Leorio imagines saying. “I know this exam is worth 70% of my grade, but I was trapped in a magic library for the night and didn’t get any sleep, so could I take it later?” Mizaistrom would back him up. Leorio’d have to sell him out a little, but that might be worth it after this mess. 

Before he can say anything more to Kurapika, Gon’s voice returns to the phone, this time at a more reasonable volume. “ _ Wait there, we’ll be over. _ ”

“You can’t come here, the library’s closed. I got locked in.” And it’s full of  _ magic fairies _ . 

“ _ That’s fine, Killua’s— _ “ The phone goes staticky again, and it’s only with an effort that Leorio can make out “ _ Don’t worry, we’ll find you! _ ” before the line goes dead.

The phone sparks a little, little blue lightning bolts dancing across the screen before it goes dead.

“I don’t think it’s supposed to do that,” Leorio says mildly, like his phone didn’t spontaneously try to electrocute him because of a simple phone call that apparently shouldn’t be able to connect.

“It is certainly not,” Kurapika says, visibly stunned. He shakes his head as though trying to dislodge the thought. “I suppose we should get moving, then. The first Roads should be open now, and we can start with those.”

“Sounds good.” Leorio stands and moves towards the door, only to be stopped by a hand pressed against his chest, the bands on Kurapika’s fingers cold even through his shirt.

“A word of warning, however: the proximity offered by the Roads is more flexible on nights like tonight, but do not make any agreements with those you meet here, and do not accept any gifts. The fae may be busy celebrating this evening, but some will find making deals with an untested human nothing less than a giftwrapped toy.”

Leorio frowns. “No deals, no gifts. Sounds easy enough.”

If Kurapika rolled his eyes any harder, they’d probably bounce away down the floor and end up under a bookshelf. “We’ll start with the Roads closest to the human world and move inward.” He sighs and checks his pocketwatch again before pulling the leather bag out from his sleeve. “We have some hours before sunrise. Take this bag and do not open it, it has what I need for later.”

“What about--”

“Later, Leorio.” Kurapika opens Leorio’s briefcase and tucks the leather drawstring bag in, nestling it between Leorio’s notebooks and pens and long-dead laptop. It doesn’t actually weigh all that much. Maybe moving all those boxes for Cheadle is finally paying off. 

As Kurapika opens the office door, Leorio half expects the office door to open onto some desert otherworld, or the moon. But it’s just the library’s entrance again, Melody’s computer shut down and papers neatly tucked into a stack. The big immobile nose-crunching front doors are still standing forebodingly.

Kurapika tugs him forward before Leorio can finish registering everything. “Aren’t you the one with an exam in the morning? We must get going.”

“Coming, coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr!](https://xyliane.tumblr.com)


	3. And I Must Follow If I Can

Leorio hasn’t considered himself the sort to believe in magic. Growing up, he’d seen too many people lose their jobs, their families, their lives, their dreams, to stupid human mistakes or just not being able to get what they needed. There isn’t any magic to a cheap metal roof caving in from the winter rust, and there isn’t magic to rot burying itself in lungs and not being able to get it out.

That’s just part of being human. And most of the time, being human sucks. Nothing magical about that.

But Leorio also didn’t believe in magic because there is always an explanation for how things work. You can’t just wave your hands and expect things to fix themselves. There are trades, in years of study or wads of cash, in exchange for the careful cuts needed to save lives as easily as they’re taken. Being a doctor, in a way, is like being a lockpick: sneak in without much lasting damage, take what’s to be taken, and get out, leaving only a little scarring behind. There’s no magic in that, just years of hard-won skill and more than a little luck.

After a few hours in the library, however, Leorio’s ready to throw in the towel on this one. His nose is evidence enough. As is the library itself, full of wonders Leorio never would have imagined even this afternoon buried beneath Cheadle’s work.

Rather than taking them back to the stacks, Kurapika leads them through a series of reading rooms, some vacant and some with a bizarre assortment of wintery-themed decorations ranging from paper snowflakes to bowls of dumplings that smell like sunlight to  _ actual _ snow drifting from the rafters onto wreaths made of pinecones and berries.  More than one room has people in it, or what look like people: A pair of girls with brightly colored hair and angular ears, a man in a top hat that would not look out of place three hundred years ago, what looks like a man-sized chameleon and a wolf-sized octopus in a sweater comparing notes over a map, a woman in a pink dress and a pink choker who seems to blur at the edges and fade into the rest of the room. Most of them wave or say hello, to which Kurapika nods or offers a slight upturning of his lips as he pauses in each room, passing his right hand against a bookshelf as though expecting it to move. 

They don’t comment on Leorio, but he feels like they watch him, eyes the color of sunsets or florescent as neon lights boring into the back of his skull. Hopefully not literally.

After a dozen or so rooms, Leorio can all but feel the annoyance dripping off of Kurapika. “The possible Roads and their portals are all too small, or too busy,” he says by way of explanation as he unlocks another door, this one made of a pale wood with a tiny stained glass window level with Leorio’s eyes. Rather than leading to another reading room, it takes them to a large room with vaulted ceilings, similar to the first one Melody had taken Leorio through but much,  _ much _ smaller, with mosaics sprawled across the floor in the shape of oceanic scenes, fishers and sharks and spiralling stylistic waves. It’s rather pretty, especially with the blue-green light filtering through the skylights. Although it’s after the sun went down, so the light can’t be coming from outside.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Leorio asks. “I’m just following you around and carrying a bag.”

Kurapika shakes his head. “I appreciate the offer, but we will likely have to go towards the Crossroads themselves before we have better luck. There will be plenty of available portals for stronger Roads for now…” Something catches his eye along the wall to the left, and he turns sharply towards a gray stone door lit with little white lights. “Perhaps I can find something else. Wait here a moment.”

“But what--” 

Kurapika strides off, shoes clicking sharply against the tile. “I’ll be right back.”

Leorio takes off after him, feeling ungainly and slow despite having much, much longer legs. “Wait, Kura--”

For the second time that night, a heavy door closes in his face. At least this time, he’s more prepared for it, catching himself with one hand before slamming into it nose-first. Cursing any and all blond librarians that prefer being stupidly cryptic rather than answering simple questions like  _ where are you going? _ , Leorio fumbles at the door handle, shoving it open. “Hey, asshole, what--!”

He’s back in the same room he’d just left. The same series of bookshelves in a variety of colors and woods, the same vaulted too-high ceilings, the same blue-green light making the mosaic come alive beneath his feet. Startled, Leorio turns back to the heavy stone door, only for it to close again just before he hits it.

“...the hell,” Leorio mutters. Magic library, whatever, this is weird.

Leorio takes his time crossing the room this time, studying the bookshelves and their contents, or at least what he can make out. He runs a hand over the smooth wood, tracing the dark catalog numbers burnt into pale shelves. Maybe when he’s a doctor and is making his own practice with his own office, he can get a desk with the same wood. Leorio wonders if Gon would know what sort of wood these shelves are. Unless it’s some sort of magic libraries-only thing? 

“The shelves are made of yew, for the most part. Although that one is made of ash,” a voice says from the other side of the stacks.

Leorio jolts, pulling his hand back from the stacks and nearly knocking a massive tome off the shelf in the process. He shoves his hand into his pocket like he’d intended to do that all along. “Uh. Thanks?” he says.

“So polite! I am pleasantly surprised. You never know these days, how well one responds to information unasked for.” The voice’s owner slinks out from the stacks, and Leorio can’t help but stare. He’s a…clown? Not that clowns can’t be in libraries, with bright orange hair and a star and a teardrop drawn carefully on pasty white cheeks, matching the symbols sewn into a bizarrely-cut shirt. Unnaturally golden eyes glimmer like a hyper-intelligent panther’s, tracing over Leorio from his head to his toes and lingering unpleasantly. 

Leorio’s skin crawls. He shoves his hands further into his pockets to try to get the hair on his arms to stop standing on end. “I was curious about the wood,” he says. 

The clown smiles, painted lips stretching over sharp teeth. “Curiosity and cats and all that,” he says. “Would you like to know what these bookshelves mean? I’ll let you have this one simply for the pleasure of your company. Or I would be more than happy to offer further services.”

_ Services  _ curls out of his mouth and into the dusty air, taking on all sorts of meanings Leorio really does not want to consider at all. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be fine.”

“Well, alright.” The clown leans against the bookshelf and studies his very colorful and very pointy nails. “Let me know if you change your mind. I do have plenty of curiosities.”

A shudder runs down Leorio’s back. Time to go back to finding Kurapika. “Well, uh. This is fun, but I have to go.”

The clown waves. “See you soon,” he says.

“Not if I can help it,” Leorio mutters as he strides as purposefully as he can back to the stone door. There’s a second door to the left he didn’t notice, a pale colored thing that looks like it’s made of the same wood as the bookshelves, with a little blue glass window. Beyond, Leorio can just make out a pair of figures, one that looks remarkably like Kurapika’s chin-length bob. Magic library, right? Maybe that is where he’s supposed to be going instead.

He pushes open the wooden door and pokes his head through, hoping that he might be able to find the idiot librarian that’s left him to fend for himself against weird clowns.

The clown gives him another wave. “Long time, no see,” he says.

Leorio’s mouth drops open. “Uh.” He looks back and—yes, that is the same door he and Kurapika had come through in the first place, the same door he had come through the second time. On the other side of the room, he can hear the sound of another door closing firmly, even as the one he stepped through shuts as well.

Leorio closes his mouth with a snap.

“Well, perhaps not so long. You were only gone but a moment. Did you decide you wanted to know what the bookshelves represent?”

“No, I—” Leorio sets his shoulders and storms right back across the room, his shoes clacking against the tiled floor. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Come back if you change your mind!” the clown calls as Leorio throws open the door and walks right back into the room.

Leorio growls as the door closes behind him. 

The smile still stretched across the clown’s face stretches impossibly further, dragging the angles of his face slightly too wide. “I see you’ve made your decision.”

“I have not!” Leorio tries to search through the conversation he and Kurapika had, the one about Roads and Rules and multidimensional portals, trying to figure out if there’s any reason that the same room he’s been in could loop in on itself again and again. 

“I can offer you a deal,” the clown says. “A moment of your company, in exchange for an informative tip on how to get where you are supposed to go. Where are you supposed to be going, by the way?”

_ No deals _ , Kurapika had said. Even without the advice, there’s no way Leorio will accept anything from this creepy clown with his creepy smile and his creepy shirt. “None of your business,” Leorio snaps. This trip across the room, he opens the first door and steps through, but stops with one foot in the room with the clown and the other, confusingly enough, also in the room with the clown. 

He looks back—forward—across the room to the door he’s trying to go through. It’s open. There’s a foot there, and a leg. It looks like his own. The room beyond—back—wherever is glowing in stained glass blue light, illuminating pale bookshelves.

Leorio’s head hurts. “What the fuck.”

“You may want to get out of there,” the clown says. “Liminal spaces have become quite uncomfortable these days. They get confused, you see: am I supposed to be here, or there?”

“Aaaaah, of course,” the clown demurs. “And what, do you suppose, is the room reading? Is it the contents of your wallet by examining the threads of your shirt, or the room with windows that stare into your soul? I quite like the the room with the chairs that never stay seated.”

The realization hits Leorio along with another wave of dizziness and an odd feeling that his leg is both completely numb and is covered with a thousand biting ants. He has to grab his own thigh and drag it through the doorway, the sensation vanishing as soon as the door closes. Leorio only barely notices it, however, as he stomps over towards the clown.

“You,” he bites off.

The clown looks as innocent as a child with their hand in the cookie jar and face smeared with crumbs. “Me?”

“This is your fault.” 

“Is it now,” the clown says. His blue-green hair stands at a direct contrast to the eye-searingly bright orange of his nails. 

Leorio doesn’t realize he’s grabbed the clown by the collar of his brightly colored shirt until the fabric bites into his hand, coarse wool harsh. “You did something to the door!”

“Did I.”

The tiny part of his mind trying desperately to remind Leorio he’s in a magic library full of fairies and space-looping rooms and some potentially really, really awful things and he should be treating other people politely is drowned out with an utterly irrational and completely confused anger. “Let me out of your stupid funhouse!”

“That would cost more than merely your company, delightful as it is,” the clown says. “Perhaps some of your time as well?”

“I’ve given you more than enough of that, you—you—”

“ _ Hisoka _ !”

Leorio starts badly, dropping the clown back to his heels and nearly tripping over himself as he steps away. The clown--Hisoka merely raises his hands, placid smile back on his face. “I did nothing more than what was already here,” he says.

Kurapika steps around the bookshelves, shirt still immaculately pressed and chin-length hair still neatly combed. The chains on the back of his hand clink softly as he points under Hisoka’s nose. “You would not be standing here if you did anything more,” he says. “You know the Rules. You should not be in the main library.”

There’s no change to Hisoka’s expression, but it practically crackles with poorly restrained sinister. “I entered through the Roads, same as anyone else. It is the Solstice. I wish to celebrate.”

“Not by trapping a human in a mirror road.”

Hisoka sighs. “You’re no fun anymore, Lord Librarian,” he says. “Once you found your prizes, you locked yourself away to stew on their remains. Such a shame, truly. Their eyes are not worth yours.”

Kurapika lets out a noise that sounds like a growl, low and furious as his eyes burn with red light. He doesn’t physically change, nor does the library room itself, but the air directly around him deepens as though at the heart of a hurricane, leaving only his eyes and the chains on his fingers glimmering with unseen light. “You are well aware of what I lost, magician,” Kurapika says. 

The clown’s smile widens, and he pockets his playing cards. “Which is why I know you’re worthy of being played with.”

The snarl that comes out of Kurapika is low enough to shake the room, and he takes a threatening step towards Hisoka. A pair of chains loop out of his sleeve and down his wrist, flickering with red light. 

Leorio should probably get out of the way. This is neither his fight nor his problem. 

But then again, Leorio’s never been very good at listening to his head. Mama’s always said that about him, thinking with his heart and trying to cure all the ills in the world when he should be listening to any or all rational sense.

So without even considering what a cloud of energy or some angry chains could do to himself, Leorio reaches out and firmly pokes Kurapika in the shoulder. “Hey, Kurapika. He’s just trying to piss you off.”

The lights are snuffed out as though they never existed, and Kurapika flinches with his whole body, chains seeming to slide up his hand and back into the sleeve. He glances up at Leorio with wide gray eyes. “Yes. Of course.”

Rather than being too displeased at the turn of events, the clown actually seems to be delighted. Both of Hisoka’s elegantly drawn eyebrows go up almost to his hairline. “Kurapika, huh?” He doesn’t so much leer as loom at the shorter blond, smile sharpening audibly. “Giving names to the dustballs drifting through the Roads?”

“He’s a visitor,” Kurapika says. “Which is more than I can say for the likes of you.”

“And how quickly you forget what is owed.” Hisoka flutters his hands back and forth, nails glittering distractingly. “ _ Kurapika _ . I have a brief errand to run, but I’ll stick around for the Solstice, I think, and then our deal is done. The eyes in the past for my presence in the present.”

If Kurapika grinds his teeth any harder, he’ll probably have nothing but gums left within the hour. “I don’t have a choice in this.”

“No, you don’t.” Golden eyes curl in amusement. “We’ll chat again soon. And human, do let me know if you change your mind. I’m sure we’d have fun.”

Leorio shakes the spots out of his eyes and steps back so Kurapika’s between him and the clown again. He’s not hiding, though, not least because Kurapika is too short for Leorio to even try. “I’d rather stay with Kurapika, if it’s all the same.” 

“As you wish.” Hisoka sighs with his whole body, shoulders drooping in melodramatic defeat. “I’ll be off then. Happy midwinter, human. I’m sure I’ll see you again before too long.”

The clown all but flounces across the tiled mosaics, heels clacking arrhythmically as he reaches the pair of doors Leorio had been stuck in. With a jaunty wave and a too-pleasant smile, he vanishes through the stone door. 

Leorio can’t help but twist his head to see if there’s a clown sneaking up on him through the damn impossible door. Thankfully, the door doesn’t open, and there’s not even a sign that Hisoka was ever there in the first place.

Well, other than the way Leorio’s pulse pounds like hammers against his throat, or how Kurapika looks up at him like he can’t decide if he wants to throttle him or hug him. (Why not both? a not-at-all helpful part of Leorio’s mind offers, and he does his damndest to shove that little voice right back into its hole.)

Before Kurapika can yell at him, Leorio says, “I know I wasn’t supposed to follow you but you didn’t say where you were going. But I also didn’t want to get lost again, so.”

Kurapika brushes his hair out of his eyes, mouth pursed over what look like unpleasant thoughts. “So you got lost anyways,” he says.

“I...yes. I guess.”

Kurapika stares at him for another long moment, before making a weird sound. It comes out of his nose via his chest, doubling in volume with each repetition until he’s snorting with laughter, leaning helplessly against one of the bookshelves. There’s nothing Leorio can do except look put-upon and wait for the short blond man to finish laughing at his plight. Like it’s not Kurapika’s fault in the first place.

Locked in a library and then made fun of by a clown  _ and _ a librarian. A librarian who has no business looking as attractive laughing his head off at Leorio’s expense as he does. Tonight’s going just swimmingly.

“I cannot remember the last time I saw Kurapika laugh that hard,” a familiar voice hums from Leorio’s elbow. 

He does not jump a foot in the air in surprise, nor does he make a squeaking noise of panic that sets Kurapika off again. Kurapika’s just weird like that, laughing at nothing at all. “Melody! I didn’t hear you.”

Melody merely smiles. “The little things are sometimes easiest to miss. And I was under the impression you were to leave for the night once your studies were complete.” 

Leorio feels his cheeks burn. “I was, yeah. But I got stuck.”

“I can tell.” 

Since Kurapika’s still busy laughing at  _ absolutely nothing _ Leorio did, he crouches down to be a little closer to Melody’s height. The change makes it easier to see the pleased smile on her plump cheeks. “So are you stuck here too? Since you’re...not fae. Right?”

She sighs, a tritone puff of air. “I’m human, just like yourself,” she says. “Or perhaps, for the most part. I’m never quite sure with this curse.” 

“Curse?”

She runs her fingers over her sleeve, brushing away some unseen lint. “An old friend and I sought songs outside of our limited abilities. We thought we could take them before anyone noticed. We instead attracted attention we should have rather avoided.”

Leorio begins to reach out, trying to find some level of comfort to grab onto or offer and finding nothing. If there is anything to say at all. “I’m so sorry, Melody. Is there anything I can…”

She shakes her head, the soft smile returning to her face. “It is long in the past. And my current position here has little to do with it. I’m here tonight for the party, although it seems that I am also to help you find a proper exit where there may be none. You may ask Kurapika, once he has calmed himself.”

“You done?” Leorio huffs as Kurapika calms down enough to breathe.

The librarian in question wipes a tear from his eyes. “For the moment,” he says. “Of anyone who might find you a safe way home, Melody knows the most possibilities.”

Melody inclines her head in acknowledgment, bald head glistening in the blueish light. “Other than you. Kurapika, we may want to go somewhere more public. And I believe your guest will need some nourishment.”

Leorio’s stomach growls in agreement. “Just some coffee would be great,” he says in defiance of his hunger. “Wait, I’m not supposed to accept any gifts. Are you…?”

“This is given in good faith, from me to you, as thanks for making my friend’s night somewhat less painful.”

Kurapika shakes his head. “Melody, you don’t…”

“I don’t. But I am anyways.” Her smile emphasizes her buck teeth but in a way that makes the expression only calming. “And I believe I may have found a Road for you, Leorio. We will see it on the way, to evaluate what direction you would like to take. Come on.”

 

\----

 

They bypass another reading room, one that smells of cinnamon and persimmons with a trio of robed figures writing poetry in scrawling gold calligraphy, and open onto a wide corridor decorated with potted trees and colorful hanging lamps. The ceiling appears to be simply more of the trees lining the pathway, which crunches like pebbles beneath Leorio’s feet. People of all shapes, sizes, and colors stream by in small groups, most of them moving in the same direction Melody leads them. If Leorio didn’t know any better, he’d swear they were in some old city, walking on a road that’s been maintained and updated for over a thousand years.

“This is still the library?” he asks.

Walking a few steps ahead, Melody nods back. “It is closer to the heart of the Crossroads, where the Roads converge formally, and less close to Yorknew. But I believe it is meant to represent the city streets as they are imagined.”

“A physical manifestation of the ideal of Roads,” Kurapika adds. He walks at pace with Leorio, taking an extra half step for every two of Leorio’s. “A Road is the pathway we imagine it to be. It’s only fitting that, at the center of all of them, the corridors into the Crossroads appears as the best of them all.”

Leorio opens his mouth to make a smart comment by shoving his foot right in, but something about the way Kurapika stares at the bobbing lights gives him pause. “Did you make this?”

“Oh, no. No, this is far beyond anything I could even try to build.” The wistfulness in his eyes deepens, flickering with brief moments of sadness like fireflies in twilight. “I’m just a librarian.”

The very recent image of brilliant red eyes and sparking silver chains ready to rip Hisoka limb from limb comes unbidden to Leorio’s mind. It’s kind of terrifying how quickly it comes, but to be fair, it is also really hot. Leorio tries to ignore it. “That’s a load of bullshit,” he says.

Kurapika stiffens, shoulders back and chin up. Or more drastically up, considering how far he has to tilt his head to look Leorio in the eye. “It is what I am, here,” he says. “Or do you deny my job?”

“No, but.” Leorio glances up towards Melody, who walks seemingly unaware of their conversation. “You looked like you wanted to murder Hisoka. Which, fair, so did I. He has a very punchable personality.”

Kurapika tries to choke back a snicker and only mostly succeeds. “Unfortunately, he is not easy to punch, but I agree.”

Leorio spreads his hands out before them both in an  _ exactly! _ sort of gesture. “But he barely said anything to you and you went straight into murdertown.”

And just like that, all of the warmth and humor is sucked right out of the corridor like Leorio’s summoned the winter winds. “It’s not particularly your business,” Kurapika says, straightening out unseen wrinkles on his sleek blue sleeves and pointedly not looking at Leorio at all.

“Why not?”

“Why should it be at all?”

“Because I--”  _ want to get to know you better _ almost spills over, but Leorio catches the thought and tosses it back with the image of Kurapika at the center of his own rage-induced galestorm and the immediate association with  _ hot _ . Leorio knows he has types, usually buxom women with brightly colored hair and brilliant smiles, but passionate people of any gender ready to fight despite apparent common sense is not an unfamiliar road. Especially when this one in particular laughs, and it sounds like it goes through his sinuses and out his ears and is entirely incongruous with any put-together appearances, and it’s very possibly the best thing Leorio’s ever heard. But now is really,  _ really  _ not the time. 

Leorio tries again. “Because I want to make sure I don’t accidentally mention something that makes you do that to me. I’m a med student, not a magic worker. Or fae.”

That seems to mostly satisfy Kurapika, who relaxes a bit although not quite back to the comfortable level of comradery they’d been at just before. Leorio finds himself mourning the loss. “I suppose that is understandable,” he says. “Will you accept my promise I would not turn on you like that, barring any unwarranted antagonism.”

“I can’t promise I won’t piss you off, if that’s what you want. My grandmother never managed to knock that out of me or my siblings.”

“Your head is simply too hard to have anything knocked out of it,” Kurapika says, gray eyes twinkling. Leorio wishes he could say anything in opposition to that, but it’s probably the most accurate observation the librarian’s made about him so far. 

He rubs the back of his head, short coarse hairs on the back of his skull scratching against his palm. “What if we make a deal?” he asks. “Answer for answer. You tell me the basics of how I don’t tick you off, and I’ll tell you…”

The realization that this is a much better deal for himself than for Kurapika for multiple reasons makes Leorio trail off. He doesn’t have many secrets to hide. He doesn’t have powers or magic that someone else could use to hurt anyone, other than a brainful of crammed half-remembered information on decade-old viral tests. And he’s the one who wants to know more about the librarian, now, when he could have asked more back in the office hours ago. (Or minutes ago. Who even knows how much time’s passed in the library, other than Solstice Time. Which is ambiguous and unknowing, and Leorio does not like it one bit.) 

But Kurapika looks up at him with interest, like he’s considering the deal. “Three questions to your one,” he says finally. “And you must answer first.”

“That seems kind of unfair,” Leorio says just to argue.

“It’s the offer.”

Melody pauses ahead of them, realizing that the two men have long since drifted out of her shadow. “We should have a few minutes,” she says. “If you would like to speak without me here.”

“It’s okay, Melody. Thank you,” Kurapika says, and smiles slightly, just enough to make Leorio’s heart wrench painfully. “You already know everything I would mention.”

She says nothing to that. “Nevertheless, I will go on ahead.” She resumes her stroll back down the corridor, and Leorio swears she winks at him.

Weird. But not even close to the weirdest thing from the last several hours. Or minutes. Or however long it’s been--time is either meaningless or too much in this place, and it makes Leorio’s temples throb just thinking about it.

Kurapika motions over to a stone bench between two gingko trees with leaves like yellow and orange fans, slowly fluttering down into neat circular piles on the sides of the corridor. “Do we have a deal?” he asks.

“Three answers to your one. Yeah, deal. I don’t have anything to hide.”

Kurapika’s face twists unpleasantly. “Everyone is hiding something, even if they’re unaware,” he says and laces his fingers together in his lap, chained right hand over left. The metal glints in soft yellow light filtering through the trees. “As I did not ask previously, what is your exam on tomorrow?”

“ _ That’s _ your first question?” Leorio blurts out, and immediately regrets it. “Wait, that’s not my question. You can’t answer my question until I’ve answered three of yours.”

It is still surprising that Kurapika allows this, his eyes smiling even if his mouth isn’t. “Nevertheless, your answer?”

“Right, uh.” Exam, exam. Test. Tomorrow. Dr. Yorkshire’s imminent wrath and Leorio’s inevitable demise beneath a stack of moving boxes. “It’s the final exam for my virology class. My advisor’s teaching it, too, so if I fail this…” Leorio sighs and leans back, letting his head thunk against the brick wall. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“One class is not the end of the world,” Kurapika says.

It’s impossible to count the  number of times Leorio’s heard that one, whether in high school desperate for a scholarship to get to the right uni, in undergrad desperate to not lose his scholarship, in med school desperate to not lose everything he’s worked for. “It is when it’s all I have,” Leorio says. “I can’t afford school. My loans’ll default if I take anymore out, my family is lucky to have a roof over our heads. They work hard so I can study. And I work in a lab so I can  _ afford _ to study.”

“Is that why you are in med school?” 

“Is that your second question?”

Kurapika nods, expression deliberately neutral. 

Leorio grins. At least this answer is easy. “I’m in med school so I can earn a shitton of cash!” he says.

He doesn’t expect Kurapika to half fall off the bench. “You’re spending everything you have...to earn money,” he says incredulously, not bothering to pick himself up off the stone floor.

“It sounds stupid when you put it that way,” Leorio grumbles. 

“It is stupid!” the librarian says. “Your family is still around, and all you care about is money. Do you know what you could do with the sort of education you’re receiving? What you could do with the information in the Compendium alone--”

“Is enough for me to pass my class with flying colors, spend the next few years finishing my degree, and go on to be a world-famous immunologist. People will pay me hand over fist for what I’ll be capable of doing! I’ll be rich!” It’s somewhat unrealistic to covet the image of a mountain of gold he’d had when he was nineteen and even stupider than he is now, but it’s a really nice mountain of gold. There’s even a little !LEORIO OLE! flag waving at the top.

Which is a much more positive reception than Kurapika’s infuriated glare. “And what’s the point of that?” he snaps. 

“You have magic healing chains, so you probably don’t get this a lot, but not all of us can heal. And even fewer of us can afford to.”

A confused wrinkle appears between Kurapika’s eyebrows, deepening the longer he scowls. “So you’ll earn money to help yourself? What sort of reason is that?”

There’s more than a little anger in Kurapika’s voice, but it’s almost completely buried under the utter disappointment. Leorio doesn’t understand. How has anything he’s said been illogical? Even the get-rich part, which is the most rational part of the whole project judging by the intensity of Cheadle’s exams and the nights on almost no sleep. “No! No way would I help myself. That’s such a--” 

“Selfish thing to do,” Kurapika says, cutting off Leorio’s protests without even bothering to listen. 

_ Selfish.  _ The word reaches out and smacks Leorio across the face, stinging all the way to his heart. “And how many people do you bother to heal?” he demands, the words tumbling out on offended hurt more than any actual thought. “Since it’s not something I can do. I just have whatever tools I can reach.”

“I--” Kurapika stills, a flash of red dancing across his eyes. “That is not what I meant.”

Leorio doesn’t care. “Do you help humans that wander in off the street with broken legs, or a little kid with brain cancer? How about an old lady with crippling osteoporosis? What about something that  _ can’t  _ be cured, can you help them?”

The librarian folds his hands, but Leorio notices how they tremble, the silver chains pulled tight and brittle against his skin. “I don’t have that sort of power,” he finally says. “No one does. The cost would be too high.”

“But everything has a cost, right? Everything has a price tag. Maybe it’s in gold, maybe it’s in magic, maybe it’s in knowledge.” Leorio clenches his fists, blunt nails biting into his palms. “If I have enough money, I can pay for it. If I have enough money, I never have to watch someone waste away when there’s something I can do about it. Do you know what it’s like, not being able to help someone asking to be saved? Or do you just wave your chains and poof, it’s fixed?”

Kurapika looks like he’s been sucker punched, gray eyes deep and wounded for a moment before he folds in on himself. “If only it were so simple,” he says quietly.

It feels like he’s said too much, too quickly. Leorio stands abruptly, nearly smacking his forehead against one of the tree branches. He ducks out of the way of the falling yellow leaves and walks a few paces down the corridor as fast as he can, nearly running into a slender woman with slits for pupils. She hisses at him as he tries to apologize, and her tongue is forked. 

It takes Leorio a moment to realize that he knows the woman. He’s supposed to be taking a class with her next semester. “Dr. Geru?” he says.

She blinks--her eyelids blink sideways. If Leorio weren’t busy trying not to deal with how his thoughts are in freefall, he’d wonder how that works with human eyes. Or if she’s human at all. But Geru smiles, not noticing Leorio’s mental scrambling. “Ah, yes. Paladiknight. Cheadle talks about you frequently.”

Leorio feels his ears warm. “Hopefully nothing too bad,” he says.

“I am surprised to see you here. Don’t you have an exam in the morning?”

“Uh…” 

“Well, don’t let me keep you. The Winter Solstice does only happen once a year, after all.” She strides off before he can respond, waving cheerfully as she disappears into the river of people and colors.

Leorio shakes his head, trying to recover some of his composure. Why isn’t he used to this by now. Is  _ everyone  _ on campus involved in this? Is Cheadle? Does Cheadle know about...well, about everything? He’s so stuck in his thoughts, he doesn’t have the chance to run away from Kurapika. The librarian appears at his elbow, tugging the dark sleeve of his shirt almost hesitantly.

“Leorio,” he says, and Leorio doesn’t know if he wants to run or give Kurapika a hug. He looks wounded, shoulders uncharacteristically hunched and mouth drawn in a thin line, making his eyes huge. He looks  _ young. _

Leorio settles for letting Kurapika take his hand. It’s warm in his, and oddly calloused where the chains fall. “Kurapika.”

“I’m sorry,” the librarian says. “I underestimated you.”

“Damn right,” Leorio mutters, and Kurapika cracks a crooked smile. “And I’m sorry, too. That last comment was...I was an ass.”

“Damn right,” Kurapika echoes, right down to the indignant intonation. “You are an ass.”

Leorio snorts. 

“And I do understand. About...losing something you can’t save. My family… I suppose I am jealous that you still have yours.” Kurapika stares at the golden leaves of the gingko trees, and Leorio wonders momentarily if he can see straight through them, back to whatever it is he lost, or if it’s just burned onto his corneas so he’s always watching that moment of loss, played back like a bad recording.

It can’t be healthy, to see that often enough. 

“So!” Leorio says, rather than letting the tension go on any longer. “You have one more question, and then I can finally ask you something.”

That lost look in Kurapika’s gray eyes fades a bit, replaced by a glimmer of exasperation that Leorio’s come to know very well. It’s strangely fond. “Yes, of course,” he says. “Do you mind if I ask about who it was you lost?”

“I…” Leorio swallows his words, bitterness spreading on his tongue as they go down. “You don’t have to ask if it’s okay to ask.”

“I don’t have to, but I want to. And given my previous misunderstanding, I think it’s best.”

Leorio feels his cheeks turn a little pink, and he pushes his glasses up his nose with his free hand. “You apologize in the weirdest ways,” he says, and almost laughs at how affronted Kurapika appears, drawing up to his full height of right around Leorio’s shoulder and glaring. 

“There’s not much to tell, really,” Leorio says. “Pietro was the closest thing I had to a best friend growing up. My family’s big, too big really, and sometimes I needed to get away from them for a bit. Pietro was the person I ran with when I cut class, or needed a smoke break, or just wanted to get out of the worst of the slum for a little while. He taught me how to pick locks, and I taught him how to juggle a ball with his feet. He never was very good at it.” Neither of them were. They were just stupid kids looking for something to do. But they made each other smile, and laugh, and life was a little easier.

Leorio tries to shake away the memories, even as they’re more vivid than they have been in years. “But he was always getting into scrapes, always falling down. And one day he fell down and never got up.”

“Do you know why?” 

“Judging by the sudden onset, weakness, seizure, and coma, cerebral malaria,” Leorio says, like he’s listing side effects of a prescription in Cheadle’s lab. “At least, I think so. I’ve done enough research now, I can make an educated guess. But Pietro didn’t like to complain.”

“What did the doctors say?”

It’s been almost a decade, and it’s all too easy to return to the memory of going to Mama because Pietro had no one else. Of how she brushed her white hair out of her eyes, because she’d seen this too many times over the years, too many of her children and grandchildren and friends that all had the same answer.  _ I’m sorry, Rio. We don’t even have enough for you. _ Of emptying out all the money he’d hidden away, for booze or cigarettes or crappy magazines or whatever else he could get his hands on. It still hurts. “We never took him to one. And the clinic we had access to was too busy, too far, too understocked, made the wrong diagnosis and everything got worse…” 

Kurapika’s hand tightens on his, metal cuffs digging into the spaces between Leorio’s fingers. It shouldn’t be comfortable, but it is. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“It was a long time ago,” Leorio says. “But I never want to let that happen to anyone else. Not if I can help it.”

It’s hard to read Kurapika’s expressions sometimes. But his gray eyes are full with open wonder, as though Leorio’s offered him a world of possibilities he’s never considered. 

“After tonight, I’m sure Melody might be able to find you the right books,” Kurapika says curtly.

That is not anything close to what Leorio expected to hear. “Books? Why do I need more books? The Compendium’s got what I need, right?”

How Kurapika can give the impression of rolling his eyes without actually doing so is a skill Leorio admires and envies. “Books of magic, Leorio,” he says. “Of healing.”

Oh.

Well then.

“Maybe after I pass my exams,” Leorio says. “But it’s good to have another option in case I flunk out. Do you think I can make gold to pay for university admission too?”

“It’s all about money with you, isn’t it,” Kurapika says, a chuckle trapped behind his words. 

“Damn right!” Leorio says, and Kurapika’s laughter escapes, bright and alive. “And wouldn’t you want to show them to me, not Melody?”

The laugh doesn’t so much die as simply stop, sliced off by a knife. Kurapika drops his hand, and Leorio immediately regrets the loss of warmth. “I--”

“Kurapika! Leorio!” Melody calls. She bobs out of the increasing flood of people drifting down the corridor, scurrying as quickly as she can. “The entrance to the Road has changed. It’s right behind you.”

“Can they do that?” Leorio says. Melody nods somewhat hesitantly, glancing up at Kurapika for confirmation.

Kurapika frowns. “They can, although not usually. The Solstice may be helping. Why would it…?”

Leorio feels the blast of hot air on his back before he sees the opening of the Road. If that is what it is. The brick wall making up the corridor fades into a green and gold circle, surface swirling slowly like a still pond disturbed by a single pebble. Moist heat crawls up Leorio’s neck, the hottest days of summer all condensed down to a single point blasting across the surface of his skin.

“This Road isn’t supposed to be open,” Kurapika says, and flicks his wrist. One of his chains falls from his sleeve, a sharp tiny dagger at its end. Around them, people don’t seem to notice, but give the portal a wide margin of avoidance, leaving only Leorio, Kurapika, and Melody standing in front of the shimmering wall.

It pebbles, bubbling without ever losing its flat surface. Looking at it for too long makes Leorio’s eyes hurt, much like the thought of looping through the mirror road. 

There’s no noise, and no dramatic announcement of entry. One moment, the entrance to the Road is moving without moving, waves of humid air increasing with each passing second. The next, three people drop out of the space, one with impossibly long hair that seems to fade back into the portal behind them and the other two in a bubble of light, slightly more solid than the first figure and even the Road itself. 

The first person snaps his head back and forth, and the wall stops moving altogether, leaving only the slight shimmering of green and gold it had started with. It leaves behind two teenaged boys and a girl, the boys breathing heavily as they stare at each other, mixed expressions of elation and exhausted worry dancing across both their faces.

One of boys is tall and pale, with white hair and blue eyes, and is carrying a girl with black hair.

The other, brown skinned whose normally brown eyes glow bright gold, with spiky black hair that seems to fade away a little at the edges, is holding what looks like a lunchbox.

Leorio gapes. “Killua?  _ Gon? _ ”

The two teenagers grin at him, seemingly unaware of the colorful surroundings or that they’ve appeared out of a wall in the middle of what is supposed to be a library. “Hi, Leorio!” Gon says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> foot-in-mouth disease is contagious. as is hisoka. please treat accordingly.
> 
> these chapters keep getting exponentially longer. I might have to break up at least one more than I thought. but I'll still publish them all on the same day! in the meantime, [tumblr!](xyliane.tumblr.com)


	4. Until It Joins Some Larger Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before getting started: a super amazing wonderful thanks to one of my TWO incredibly talented artists who did art for this fic. ametalias did fantastic artwork for this chapter! [it is beautiful please stare at it.](http://ametalias.tumblr.com/post/161280211546/heres-my-illustration-for-hxhbb17-for)

It takes a few moments for Leorio to realize he has an armful of his roommate, Gon’s bright laughter reverberating down the corridor and drawing looks from practically every type of eye, as well as what aren’t quite eyes but stare all the same. Gon’s bear hugs are not unfamiliar, not to anyone who’s lived with him for as long as Leorio has, but it’s a little bit too much to consider how he’s getting one while in the middle of a magic corridor under a magic library next to a magic portal.

Gon sets himself back on the ground, heavy boots thumping where they land in the leaves. He looks as solid as he feels, green jacket settling heavily across his shoulders and spiked black hair all typical elements of Gon Freecss, expert gardener and hyperactive roommate.  _ Not _ typical are the looping and angular golden marks across his skin, shimmering with the same light as his eyes and making it hard to look directly at him. The air smells like summer, rich flowers and humid air that always seems to float around Gon but is particularly intense against the wintery chill of the library. Despite the obvious glee, he’s covered in a thick sheen of sweat, like he’s just finished a day working in the campus gardens and only then gone for a 10 kilometer run. 

Or come through a magical portal at top speed from the other side of the world. Or further. 

At the edge of the shimmering green distortion, Killua braces himself and the unconscious girl in his arms. Almost as tall as Leorio and lean, Killua looks like he’s sprinted a marathon and then jumped into an electric fence for the heck of it. His white hair sparks against the air, blue-white flecks of lightning dancing across pale skin. Not that he seems to notice any of it, or if he is, he has other things to focus on. “Gon, are you okay?”

The brown-skinned teenager nods, smile punch-drunk and exhausted. His eyes are brown again and the golden marks on his arms have disappeared into his skin, taking the warmth and light with them. The corridor buzzes with people returning to their walks as though they’d never been disturbed. “Yeah! That was awesome, Killua.”

“That almost got you killed, you dumbass. How did you even know the Road was there?” But Killua is matching his best friend grin for grin, and doesn’t protest when Gon presses a kiss to his cheek in acknowledgement if not apology. 

Kurapika clears a laugh from his throat, and Gon turns his smile on the librarian like a spotlight. “Kurapika! I haven’t seen you in forever. Do you still have enough tea? We’re a little understaffed at the greenhouse because of the season, but if you want to wait a few weeks, I’m sure I’ve got some in my stash...”

“Maybe if you take some of his tea, he’ll finally shut up about how bad coffee is,” Killua says.

“I doubt that,” Kurapika says at the same time Gon says, “It’s not coffee, it’s your five-shot triple chocolate syrup lattes, Killua!”

“And the waffles, and the cakes, and the pocky. You’re going to die from a heart attack before you turn thirty,” Leorio adds. “You don’t see me or Gon eating like that.”

Killua has the gall to look wounded. “Well you’re an old geezer--”

Kurapika stifles another laugh with less success, and Leorio glowers as best he can. “I’m seven years older than you, brat!”

“Exactly. And Gon’s Gon, so he eats weird anyways,” Killua says as though it should have been obvious long ago that his boyfriend’s healthy eating habits stem from a non-human existence. Which it’s  _ not _ . Leorio is pretty sure he would have noticed something like  _ glowing golden eyes _ in his roommate, eyes that are currently avoiding meeting Leorio’s. 

Maybe Leorio thought Gon would have trusted him enough with this to mention it once or twice. It’s hard not to feel hurt at that, even if Gon probably has a good reason. 

He’ll have to ask later, when he can wring an explanation and an apology out of Gon’s thick skull. “So Gon’s...fae? Like Kurapika?”

Killua huffs. “How else do you think we’d be here? It’s not like I can travel the Roads by myself. I’m awesome, but I’m human.” The girl in his arms shifts in her sleep, and Killua reshuffles his position, grimacing at the movement. “Old man, it’s about time you finally figured out the rules. It’s been hilarious how oblivious you are about magic.”

Leorio throws his arms up, unable to do anything else to contain his confusion.  _ "Why are you traveling the Roads?!" _

“How else were we supposed to pick up Alluka?”

“I don’t know, maybe a car?”

Gon sighs. “Leorio, Kukuroo Mountain is on the other side of the ocean. We’d have to take an airship, and this was kind of short notice.”

“You have all break to get there and back! Besides, won’t your family pay, Killua?”

Killua’s expression flickers through annoyance and fury before settling on peeved. But all he says is, “No.”

How Melody makes herself known in a crowd of people three times her height is a magic unmatched by any Leorio has seen so far tonight. “Excuse me,” she says, and four heads swivel down to look at her. She smiles placidly and offers Leorio his briefcase--he hadn’t realized he’d forgotten it on the bench. “Gon, when will the Road be available again?”

The teenager (is he a teenager? how old are the fae? how old is  _ Kurapika? _ ) reaches out a hand towards the glimmer on the wall, gold markings rising against his arm. The portal pebbles again, green and gold spun through with an odd spark of black thread. A fresh sheen of sweat breaks out across his forehead with the effort. “Probably not until it’s closer to dawn. We kind of smashed our way through.”

“We should have waited until summer,” Killua says. “You wouldn’t have been so tired, and we wouldn’t have had to avoid--”

Gon shakes his head, a serious line to his mouth. “No, we couldn’t,” he says. 

Killua frowns. “I know.”

Kurapika glowers, crossing his arms over his chest. “What are you avoiding?”

Neither teenager answers, although Killua pulls the girl to his chest protectively. Kurapika’s frown deepens. “It will not be difficult for me to determine where the other endpoint is,” he says.

“It’ll take time you don’t have,” Killua snarls. It’s strange to see him so openly emotional towards someone not Gon--even around Leorio, it’s all smug grins and casual faked arrogance, with only a side of the occasional genuine emotion. And even that took months to achieve. 

Gon shakes his head. “It’s okay, Killua. It’ll be obvious pretty soon anyways.”

“That is not helping your case,” the librarian says. 

Both of the boys seem to deflate. “It’s about Killua’s family. We’d rather not talk about it here,” Gon finally says.

Melody does her magic again, this time with a quiet  _ ahem _ that seems to echo in Leorio’s ears. Gon and Kurapika both jolt slightly. “If the Road will be available later, you should enjoy the Solstice while you can,” she says. “It will also be busy enough that no one will notice you.”

Gon looks about like he’s ready to pass out on his feet--the golden marks on his arm haven’t faded yet, and there’s a clear smell of warm ocean breezes fluttering around him. Killua, while not as obviously exhausted, looks just as worried, and they both hesitate. 

In the moment before they answer, Melody adds, “I believe Palm is opening her bakery again.”

There’s a light in Killua’s eyes that reminds Leorio a little too strongly of the time just after he and Gon started officially dating and Gon’d surprised his boyfriend with a kitchenful of cupcakes--none of which Leorio’d gotten to try, since Killua ate every single one of them in a night. The sugar-destroying monster of a nineteen-year-old grins at his boyfriend, only a ghost of worry still left around his edges. “Gon, let’s go!”

Killua doesn’t even bother to wait for an answer before he vanishes down the corridor, Gon trailing after him with a bemused shrug. 

\------

The crowd traveling down the corridor deepens the closer they get to what Leorio hopes is the end. The melange of colors turns almost eye-bruising in its variety, not to mention the assault on Leorio’s ears and nose. Smells of cumin and coriander from a pair of green-skinned women in saris clashes with the raspberry ice cream eaten by a human-sized bunny rabbit wrapped in a brightly colored kimono, and even that is overlapped with the smells of snow and fallen leaves coming from the corridor itself. Voices as loud as airplane jets are as easily heard as those like rainfall, sometimes coming from the same person at different moments. Oddly, it isn’t exactly unpleasant. Leorio’s not sure if this is because of something about the library, or if he’s simply becoming more used to the bizarre cacophony that seems to appear at every turn, intensifying in its idiosyncrasies the further he travels.

That his roommate fits right in with all of this should be much more surprising than it is. Even Killua, with his white hair and pale skin and whatever sleek all-black thing it is that he’s chosen as an outfit for the night, seems to stand out by half a step, not quite matching the surroundings that Gon takes to as though born in them.

From the looks he’s getting, Leorio sticks out like a child’s fingerpainting scrawled over a priceless work of art. As much as he can pretend it’s because he’s walking alongside Kurapika, who keeps flicking open his pocketwatch like it can speed up time on its own, Leorio knows it’s because he doesn’t fit in here. Not at the front of the library, where it was just him and a big old book, and not here, thrown into the throng without any life buoys to hold onto other than a roommate who isn’t close to what he’s supposed to be and an ornery librarian that can’t seem to make up his mind if Leorio’s a burden or a joke.

Also Killua, but well. The brat’s a brat. And he literally has his hands full with the girl.

“Leorio, how do you know Kurapika?” Gon asks, using the press of the crowd to fall into step with Leorio’s longer legs. Killua remains half a pace ahead, keeping an ear back towards his friends.

“He’s been helping me try to get out of the library,” Leorio says. “Or I guess more get out of the Crossroads. That is where we are, right?”

Killua snorts. “Well, no shit. But how do you know him?”

“That  _ is _ how I know him,” Leorio says, slowly so Killua can understand despite the massive block of brattiness that keeps intelligent thought from his brain. Sometimes it’s easy to forget Killua’s nineteen and well into his second year of university and is technically an adult. 

Like when he and Gon stare like Leorio’s grown a second head, blue and brown eyes in equal levels of confusion. “But you know his name,” Gon says, just as slow and deliberate as Leorio had been. It’s never entirely sure with Gon if he’s doing it consciously or not. Killua might be a brat, but at least he’s obviously one.  

“He woke me up when the library closed while I was studying, and he’s been helping me try to find a Road out. Yes, I know his name. I asked.”

“He just...told you,” Killua says, incredulous.

“Yeah, why?” Leorio does not see what the big deal is, nor why Gon’s grin is brightening his eyes so much it makes him look less like a teenager (or a...whatever he is) and more like a brown-skinned light bulb with freckles. 

Killua levels him with a blue-eyed stare, before switching the look to Kurapika. “It took him a month and a half before he told me what his name is, and that was after he manipulated me into doing more than a week of reshelving in the stacks. And that’s only because I know Gon.” 

Oddly enough, Kurapika turns a little pink. “It was an exchange,” he says as though he is making up an excuse even he barely believes. At his other side, Melody doesn’t quite disagree, but she catches Leorio’s eye and grins with intent.

Leorio flushes. 

“Sure. Right.” If Killua were any more deadpan, he could be used to bake cookies. 

“How do you know Kurapika?” Leorio asks, trying to deflect whatever this conversation is turning into by any means necessary. 

Gon tilts his head slightly, like Leorio’s offered him a worm to eat and he’s momentarily considering it. “Why wouldn’t we? He is the librarian.”

“There are a lot of librarians!” Leorio says, ignoring how the one in question bites on his fist to keep from laughing.

“Yeah, but there’s only one librarian here. The Crossroads wouldn’t want anyone else,” Killua says, grumbling. But he perks up at the sight of a sweeping arch, at least as tall as the corridor is high and lined with trellises of cherry blossoms. “Hey, look, we’re here!”

Gon puts on a long-suffering look as Killua takes off towards into the crowd, sneakers all but bouncing across the floor. “I think I know where he’s going, but will you be able to meet us?” he asks. 

Both Kurapika and Melody nod, similar smiles on their faces. “I should come with you. I’m scheduled to play just after midnight, and the stage is quite close,” Melody says, and pulls a small thin box around by its strap. It looks like an instrument case, maybe a flute or clarinet, the wood carved with tiny flowers.

“Go on ahead,” the librarian says. “I want to show Leorio around a little.”

Gon doesn’t disguise how delighted he looks at that. “That’s great! Take your time. I’m sure Killua will be fine with waiting a little while. It’s not too close to dawn yet.” He starts to leave, but halts, spinning so suddenly a pompadoured man dressed all in white nearly runs into him, the dogs in his arms barking in annoyance. “Oh, Leorio! Kurapika likes cappuccinos, extra foam.”

Melody and Gon share a conspiratorial smile, even as the librarian’s mouth drops open against whatever it is that Gon’s insinuating. “You can’t buy anything with money tonight,” Kurapika protests. 

“That’ll be fine, I’m sure!” And then Gon Freecss, master of willful and totally fake innocence, winks at Leorio before darting off with a wave, the spikes of his hair disappearing in the same direction his boyfriend went. Melody follows after at a more sedate pace, although she too gives Leorio and Kurapika a small waggle of her eyebrows. 

What the hell does  _ that _ mean? And why is Kurapika slowly turning pinker than the flowers gently blooming around the archway?

“So uh,” Leorio says at the same time Kurapika starts, “If you’d like--”

They both look away, Leorio intently studying the multicolored lamps above him as they flicker from color to color. Around them, people jostle at their elbows and sides, some murmuring apologies to Kurapika and more than a few grumbling about idiot humans getting in the way. 

Kurapika is the first to break the silence. “Normally, the center of the Crossroads is fairly quiet. No one needs to come this far to use the Roads. But the Solstice is a time of celebration and new beginnings, new endings.”

“And everyone comes in from out of town for the party,” Leorio says. He looks back up at the blossoms, pink and white and gray against red brick and green vines. The variation in their color comes from them constantly budding, blooming, and dying again. Petals scatter around the crowd, catching on fur and hair and scales before dissipating into the air in puffs of smoke. It’s almost sad, in a way, watching something beautiful die and come back to life again and again.

A few scatter into Kurapika’s hair, bright against the blond strands. Before he recognizes what he’s doing, Leorio reaches down to brush them away, catching the petals just before they turn into fragrant ash. It wins him a small astonished smile, one that digs into his chest and nestles there, a keepsake for later.

“So, uh,” Leorio starts again, rubbing the back of his neck. “Party?”

“Yes, of course.” Kurapika holds out his hand, the one without the chains this time, gesturing at the archway and the expansive crowds mingling through it. “This way?”

He doesn’t comment when Leorio scoops his hand out of the air, but he does tangle his fingers with Leorio’s, sturdy and warm. Leorio’s glad to have that grounding, because as soon as they pass through the crowds, whatever sort of multisensory cacophony Leorio thought he’d been walking through opens out into an immense open space, and--

...Leorio’s never thought much about the ways a room’s design impacts the people in it. In the operating room, lighting is important, as is having enough space to maneuver without knocking anyone’s elbows. And the apartment, as cluttered as it is with his books, Gon’s gardening, and Killua’s general mess, has  _ felt _ like home without ever really needing to be anything else. Even this library, with all its bizarre decorating choices and doors that lead back to themselves, seemingly deliberately constructed to be as annoying as possible, is just a place for books and people (human and otherwise).

The central room he and Kurapika enter, sprawled out before them in a vast dome, is so much  _ more. _

Archways are scattered at regular intervals around the wall, which stretches up far, far higher than they should within the library. Out of them stream more people and animals and creatures in between than Leorio’d even thought possible, in colors that he’s never seen with music played on instruments that shouldn’t exist. The room itself, half of a sphere lit by stars, seems to spin gently around them, the vast expanse of figures streaming in and around it like dancers in a snowglobe. 

Leorio can’t tell how far things are from each other. One moment, they’re close enough to touch, a stand of carved wooden cuckoo clocks calling the time right in his ear. The next, they’re on the other side of the room, distant enough to practically be specks in his eye. 

The one stable point in this whole chaotic menagerie, quiet and calm like the eye of a storm, is Kurapika. He takes in the dizzying swirls of people, magical and otherwise, letting it wash over and through him in waves. A small, knowing smile plays across his lips as a chorus of birdsong and lightning bursts out of a distant stall, joining the rest of the noise in a symphony. He’s heard this all before, Leorio realizes, heard and seen and smelled, maybe even danced and sang. But never quite part of it all, taking it in and letting it go.

If Leorio asked him to dance, would he want to?

Kurapika tugs his hand, bringing him out of his thoughts. “Let’s find the boys,” he says. 

Leorio can’t do anything but nod, allowing himself to be pulled along, swallowed by the crowd.

They find Gon and Killua propped up in a booth outside of a bakery, an obscene-looking monster made of scales and bulbous eyes perched on a globe marking the shop. According to the name of the shop, it’s supposed to be a mermaid. The girl that’d been in Killua’s arms before is carefully tucked into the corner of the seat, Gon’s jacket settled across her shoulders as a makeshift blanket. 

“...wasn’t looking, or Canary and Amane would have told us,” Killua is saying around a mouthful of chocolate cake. “But there’s a chance they caught wind of what we were planning. If Mom or Dad find out, or hell, if Illumi catches up before the sun comes up--”

“They’ll take you back, and I’d be thrown to the Roads. I won’t let that happen to you, Killua. Not ever.”

“Idiot, like I’d let that happen to you, either.” Killua stabs the cake viciously, sparks flying where the fork meets the plate. “At least we have a little time. There’s too much going on in the Crossroads for them to chase us yet, and once we get home they won’t be allowed--”

“Leorio! Kurapika!” Gon says too loudly, attempting to bounce out of the booth with energy he clearly doesn’t have and barely avoids falling on his face. Killua shovels another faceful of chocolate into his mouth, almost entirely hiding how he positions himself solidly in front of the girl. He says something that might be “Hi” but could just as easily be “Fuck off.” 

Rather than dance around the subject and allowing Gon to obfusticate things and Killua to be belligerently unhelpful, Leorio asks, “Why doesn’t your family want Alluka staying with you?”

Killua nearly chokes on his cake. “No reason except that they’re shit,” he manages around bits of frosting. 

“It’s not  _ no reason _ if you two almost killed yourselves getting her back.”

Before Killua can respond, possibly with teeth and claws rather than words judging by the ugly yellow flash in his eyes, Gon plops down into the seat nearly on top of him, and Killua lets out a squawk of indignation. “Don’t you remember, Leorio? Killua’s family doesn’t like him going to school so far away. We told you this a lot.”

“A  _ lot," _ Killua emphasizes. “Gerroff, Gon.”

“No. You’re comfy,” he says, and nuzzles his nose into Killua’s curls. 

“And you’re embarrassing.” He makes a show of trying to shove Gon off of him, but doesn’t actually try very hard.

Kurapika fails to contain a grin. “I believe I might be the last one to say this, but it is about damn time. Congratulations.”

“You’ve known about this for months,” Killua mutters, face glowing a luminescent red. “And it’s not like anything actually changed. Why are people still saying that.”

“I’m glad it happened,” Gon says, and Leorio can feel the embarrassment coming off of Killua in waves. 

“Please tell me they were just as bad around you as they were around me,” Leorio says. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to listen to Gon describe how amazing Killua is, or listen to Killua moon over Gon. And I never even once locked them in a closet together. I think I deserve an award.”

Kurapika considers this thoughtfully, ignoring how both teenagers attempt to spontaneously combust. “That is worthy of commendation. I may have conveniently left them alone more than once in an attempt to encourage them to get over themselves, but I don’t think they took the hint.”

“You did  _ not!" _ Killua blurts out.

“Oh, that’s what the curtain was for,” Gon says.

The two look at each other and burst into giggles.

It’s nice that Kurapika also catches how flustered both of the boys are, or perhaps that was the point. He says, “As it is, that doesn’t explain why you took the scenic route to bring your sister here, rather than picking her up more conventionally. Or waiting for any night other than the absolute nadir of Gon’s abilities. Winter is as far from Whale Island as it is possible to get.”

The laughter fades into obstinate stares. “We had to,” Gon says. 

“It was either this or never,” Killua says. “Illumi--my brother got it into his head to use the Solstice to try to change her, because she can… Alluka’s got magic none of us do. She can make Roads.”

“That’s not possible,” Kurapika says. “How--”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you, not here. No offense, Kurapika. And my dipshit family, they don’t think she’s a girl, they don’t think she’s  _ human, _ they just think she’s a tool for making Roads, and I could not let her stay there. Not when she should be free.”

What little Killua’s spoken about his family has either been glowing praises for his little sister, or unprintable cursing of any number of family members. Leorio’s not sure how many are in the Zoldyck tree, but given the chance, he feels like he’d gladly punch almost all of them. Especially when Killua’s eyes become haunted by unseen ghosts just with their mention. 

Gon gently wraps his hand around his best friend’s. “Killua made a deal with the fae that work for his family. If he and Alluka are home before sunrise, she gets to stay with him. But there aren’t any good ways out of his family’s mansion, even with the Roads, so we had to take a long way back.”

“And everything ends up in the Crossroads eventually,” Kurapika says.

Gon nods. “It’s okay, Killua. She’ll be safe in Yorknew.”

Killua doesn’t look wholly convinced, but he looks less likely to argue. Also helping is the arrival of  a plate of pastries the size of a small car. It’s carried by a beautiful woman, dressed in a high-collared black dress and elbow-length gloves ending in the too-sharp points. Long black hair sweeps back from her shoulders, shimmering in the light of the cafe and highlighting the paleness of her skin. It would be unsettling if she weren’t gorgeous, Leorio thinks.

What’s actually unsettling is that she has an enormous purple stone that seems to be embedded in her forehead. Because that’s totally normal.

Leorio mentally smacks himself upside the head. There is an octopus drinking coffee with a man-sized lizard on the other side of the bakery. A woman with a gem in her forehead is as ordinary as a walk in the park (if that park was full of rainbow-colored trees and butterflies made of gemstones and evil clowns hiding behind the bookshelves). 

Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to notice Leorio’s momentary inability to think. Wine colored eyes narrow at Killua, who completely ignores it in favor of stuffing his face. “Do you eat nothing at home?” she asks.

“Gon only makes healthy shit, and the old man can’t cook  _ for _ shit.” Killua carefully selects a petit-four and squashes it into his boyfriend’s mouth before Gon can say anything. Leorio tries to point out Killua just has no nose for spices, but is utterly ignored. “Your stuff’s the best, anyways.”

The woman gasps daintily at the compliment, incongruous with the murderous malevolence she was directing at Killua barely a moment before. She zeros in on Leorio, eyes sweeping over him once, slow enough to make his skin tingle. He gives her a smile he hopes is attractive and suave. She says, “I am Palm Siberia, and this is my bakery. You must be Gon’s roommate. Killua has always called you an old man, so I expected someone…”

Leorio grimaces. “Decrepit?”

“Dignified?” Kurapika offers.

“Old?” Gon and Killua say in unison.

Palm taps a claw to her lips. “Less handsome, certainly,” she says. Killua actually chokes at that, forcing Gon to throw himself backwards before he’s hit in the face with half-eaten pastries. 

Leorio takes the compliment with far more grace. Beautiful women telling him he’s handsome? Maybe failing his exam tomorrow will be worth this whole mess. “Hear that? She thinks I’m handsome!”

“However handsome you are, you are also equally foolish,” Kurapika says.

All of the sound in this din fades away abruptly, except for the word  _ handsome _ echoing between Leorio’s ears. “You think I’m handsome?”

Kurapika’s eyes widen. “I said no such thing.”

“You definitely did,” Palm and Killua both say. Gon doesn’t add anything but he grins maniacally. 

The librarian visibly attempts to find anything to say to refute obvious fact. When nothing comes to mind, he resolutely looks away, trying and failing to hide the pink staining his cheeks. Leorio’s mouth falls open all the way to the floor and stays there, happy to remain completely and utterly baffled. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone break Kurapika before,” Killua muses.

Palm  _ giggles, _ clawed hand covering her mouth. It sounds like harp strings being plucked by crows in a graveyard. She sets before Leorio a plate full of spun sugar and rich cheesecake, strawberry and vanilla wafting out of the thick cream. “For ruffling our librarian, you deserve a gift.”

Leorio’s stomach growls loud enough to be heard back at the university no matter how many worlds away they currently are. “I can’t…”

Killua’s fork darts across the table, only to be knocked back by his boyfriend’s quick action. “It’s Leorio’s,” Gon says firmly.

“He said he doesn’t want it!”

“Want has nothing to do with it,” Leorio grumbles. “I’ve been told not to accept gifts. And I can’t exactly buy this, unless you take credit cards…?”

Palm’s smile is full of teeth. “On another night, perhaps. But this is truly a gift, in exchange for my amusement. It is so rare to see someone like Kurapika become flustered over words. You must be special.” 

“I’m just a med student,” Leorio mutters. Somehow, being complimented as  _ special _ is much harder to deal with than how attractive he looks. It’s not like he can manifest healing chains or make summery portals appear in a wall, or even storm a mansion to save a family member. Leorio’s just a guy who wants to help people.

Mercifully, Palm doesn’t press him on this, although she does conjure up a sandwich as wide as her palms from the magical space of the window to her oven and sets it next to the sweets. “This is also not for Killua. If I don’t offer you something besides dessert, Gon will pout and I don’t know anyone who’s immune to that.”

Killua begins to open his mouth to argue, but Palm merely stares down her nose. He turns pink and shoves more sugar into his face.

It  _ looks  _ like a normal (if massive) sandwich, and it  _ smells  _ like food. And if no one is stopping Leorio, even if everyone else seems a little distracted, well. It’s been a really damn long time since the last solid food he ate, and Leorio is more than happy to die on a full stomach. Thankfully, it even tastes like a normal sandwich. Really damn good, but the first normal thing he’s dealt with in this whole library. Crossroads.  _ Magical reality-crossing book space. _

He’s opening his mouth to ask for another sandwich (he is entirely willing to throw Kurapika under the bus in the name of delicious food), when Kurapika tugs him away towards the end of the bakery, where a line of stools have been placed in front of an empty stage. “What’s wrong?” Leorio asks as the lights around the bakery dim.

“Listen.” The word seems to echo in the sudden hush. Outside of the bakery and a few of the surrounding booths, the party continues in its audiovisual cacophony, but it fades away, like a blanket’s been thrown over the area.

A soft flute runs up and down a scale, pauses, and climbs it again, skipping notes almost at random. Kurapika climbs into one of the stools, tugging out his pocketwatch as he does. Leorio takes the seat next to him, peering at the watch. Kurapika snaps it shut before he can get a good look, and Leorio schools his eyes forward towards the empty air. “Is Melody playing? Do you know what?” he whispers.

“ _ Quiet, _ Leorio.” 

Leorio starts to ask another question, but the air parts in front of him. Melody smiles quietly, dressed in a plain gray dress and a sunhat on her head. A trio of yellow sunflowers are tucked into the hat’s band, leaves fluttering as she moves her head. It looks like Gon’s handiwork, and when Leorio twists his head back to his roommate, Gon winks and grins as Palm shushes him. On stage, Melody takes a deep breath and presses her flute to her lips. 

From the opening notes, it’s obvious there is no supernatural magic in the notes, not that Leorio can tell. Nothing changes: no abrupt transformations, no dessert manifesting out of nowhere, not even a book explaining what music she’s playing in the first place. She pauses to breathe at the end of phrases, short full-body gasps that match the rhythm and the notes.

It might not be able to conjure doors or color air, but Melody’s music is magic all the same, and Leorio is swept away on it. 

The odd arpeggios are nothing like anything Leorio’s heard before. It wraps through the space, tangling in the quiet and lancing everyone to their seats. Every fluttering note spins outward in an echo, like falling leaves caught on an autumn breeze, delicate and wistful with the sound of forests and birdsong. Every note, every tremor, feels like a rush, and Kurapika’s hand tightens almost painfully in Leorio’s, hard enough to cut off all blood flow--and then just as painfully, it’s gone. Leorio’s fingers tingle in the absence.

Leorio glances down, to ask what’s wrong or what the music means. But Kurapika barely seems to notice, eyes locked on his friend as she trills upwards through the phrases. 

Kurapika is still distant even as Melody finishes to applause ranging from polite to Gon and Killua’s euphoric whoops. Melody smiles widely at the cheering, jumping down from the little stage and making her way over to them. A three piece band manifests where she’d been, picking up a soft and jazzy thing that encourages people to return to their conversations. But the librarian says nothing, gray eyes unreadable.

Leorio tries to fill the silence as best he can. “I don’t have an ear for this sort of thing, but that sounded really good! How long have you been working on it?” he says.

“Not as long as I would have liked,” she says. She’s speaking to Leorio, but her eyes are on Kurapika, waiting for a response to the music. “I only found it recently, in the old sunroom archives.”

“What is it?” Leorio asks, curious.

“It’s my family’s… It’s Kurta music,” Kurapika says, voice quiet and halting. “I haven’t heard it since…”

Melody’s smile softens as she peers upward at her friend. “I wanted to give you a surprise. You speak so rarely of your home, and when you think no one’s listening, your heart sounds like you miss them terribly. Although not tonight, until now.” Her gaze flits to Leorio briefly for reasons Leorio himself can’t understand. 

Kurapika doesn’t notice. “Melody…”

“Palm helped, somewhat. We were planning on luring you out of your office for the Solstice party, but thankfully your friends were here to take care of that for us.” She tucks her flute safely into her hands, twisting her pudgy fingers together. “I hope it’s alright.”

In a smooth motion, Kurapika steps down from his seat so he can look Melody in the eye, leaving Leorio behind. “It was. It reminds me of what I’m doing here, of my purpose.” He offers her a small smile, haunted and wistful. It sits poorly on his face, and Leorio can’t figure out why. It’s just a smile. But Leorio loops their fingers together again as he stands, grip loose enough that it might as well not be there at all. “Thank you, Melody. Truly.”

Her own smile deepens, lighting up her whole face. “Now, I believe Palm promised dessert?”

Gon and Killua are once again deep in a conversation that involves both of them eating large quantities of cake, but it halts instantly as soon as Melody hops into the seat next to Palm. But rather than comment on the performance, Gon gapes at Leorio’s hand, still laced with Kurapika’s. He and Melody exchange the same look they’d given each other before, and Gon’s grin widens.

“Oi, dumbass. Chill.” Killua pokes his boyfriend none too gently in the cheeks. It doesn’t stop Gon from practically vibrating with poorly contained glee. 

“Why? This is great!” Gon says. The air around him drops back to room temperature, though. “Kurapika, will you visit us at the apartment? I’m sure Leorio’d like that.”

“I--” Kurapika looks at Gon as though the thought had never occurred to him before that moment. “I have it taken care of.”

Gon processes this for a moment, absent mindedly scooting the plate of Leorio’s sweets away from Killua again. “Let us know if you want help. Well, other than Leorio. He’s already helping, right?”

“I am,” Leorio says before Kurapika can deny it. Even if it’s just for however long their deal lasts, even if it’s only for the night, he wants to help as much as he can. 

Kurapika simply stares at him as though held to the spot, unable to look away, as though Leorio has offered him a treasure chest overflowing with diamonds, or a mansion built on the moon. Maybe something even more than that, something not possible in any reality, something that will make his gray eyes dance and sing.

It’s easy to get lost in those eyes.

“Ugh gross,” Killua says, and Leorio is brought right back to earth with all of the subtlety of a brick to the face. Both Gon and Palm smack the white haired teenager upside the head, and he whines in protest. 

“You’re not any better, brat,” Palm says, the gem on her forehead glinting ominously. 

Killua flushes but doesn’t deny it. Instead, he grabs another handful of cookies in one hand and his best friend in the other. “Look, Gon and I weren’t even planning on stopping here for so long. I have to get Alluka home as soon as possible.”

“This was your idea, Killua!” Gon protests.

“Yeah, because you could barely stand, and Palm makes the best sweets.” As if to prove the point, Killua shoves at least three chocolate-dipped cookies the size of his palm into his mouth, tucking the rest into a folded napkin for later. Palm looks pleased despite herself, a wide smile stretching across her face she covers poorly with a clawed glove. “And it’s your fault we went to the Crossroads to check on the old man instead of going straight home, like we were supposed to.”

Gon sighs, amused despite how many times they’ve had similar conversations. “I think we might have had to come here anyways. And we have until the sun rises, right? When is that?”

Leorio’s phone reads 27:83, and he pokes it irritably. Kurapika checks his pocketwatch. “Not much more than an hour,” he says. “Gon, are you able to leave?”

“Maybe?” he says, guileless smile failing to disguise how exhausted he sounds. Leorio readies another lecture--there  _ has _ to be someone trustworthy and capable of taking them all home--when the girl in the booth next to Killua begins to stir, muttering wordless noise as her eyes flutter open. The blue eyes are twins to Killua’s own, highlighted by pale skin and blue-black hair chopped in blunt layers or looped through yellow beads. 

“Morning, Alluka,” Killua says softly. 

“Brother, where…?” She sits up, rubbing her eyes and trying to take in everything she can. “I...Brother, it’s  _ loud." _

Killua tries to brush chunky locks of hair out of her face. “We’re almost home. Just a little further, then you’ll be safe.”

“It’s not safe  _ now." _ Before the white-haired teenager can do anything, Alluka grimaces, her face turning away from Leorio and towards the center of the Crossroads. Her whole body stiffens at the sight of something, or maybe at the overwhelming chaos mingling around the space. But just as Killua’s reaching back for her, she goes slack and turns around. 

Leorio nearly drops his phone. “Killua, what is wrong with your sister?”

“There’s  _ nothing _ wrong with her,” he bites off. 

The girl twists her head to stare at her brother, eyes not so much black as an utter absence of light, holes in the world carved into a featureless and colorless face. “Killua!” she says. She smiles widely, and her mouth has no teeth and no tongue and no lips. In fact, it’s not even a mouth at all, the same empty void as her eyes.

Her brother puts on a soft smile, nerves worrying at the edges. “Hi, Nanika.”

She reaches out, pointing at the lights over Palm’s bakery. They flicker in colors as she moves her hand, waving in time with her movements. “Pretty,” she coos.

“Yeah, they’re real pretty. Like you.” He presses a soft kiss to her head. “We have to leave, Nanika. Can Alluka come back out?”

The girl doesn’t seem to acknowledge Killua’s question, her hands fluttering back and forth in a tiny circle. “Pretty,” she says again, and twists her fingers as though untying a knot made of barbed wire. The air ripples, momentarily fragmented through a sheer fabric made of nothing, and then the lights overhead are directly in front of her.

Kurapika swallows audibly. “Killua, your sister--you cannot simply make new entrances to the Roads, not here. It shouldn’t be possible. She’s  _ human." _

“Why do you think my family locked her away? I told you, she can make Roads. That’s pretty lucrative in their line of business.” He tangles his fingers with hers, stopping her before she can reach through the portal she created. Black holes turned upside down in a distressed pout. “Not now, Nanika,” he says. 

“But I want!”

As if summoned, Gon peers around his boyfriend, hands out and tattoos vibrant on his arms and up his neck. From his palms stretch a trio of flowers in blue and white, petals shot through with yellow. As Leorio watches, they blossom from buds the side of his thumbnail to nearly too large for Gon to hold. “They’re not lights, but how about these?” 

She slowly takes the flowers into her arms. “For me?”

“For you.” The girl beams, unmistakable joy shining out of her blank features. Gon smiles back, even as he collapses into his seat. The golden tattoos don’t fade this time, and he breathes heavily.

The girl carefully studies the flowers. One she tucks into Killua’s hair, where it wobbles precariously. She turns her smile on her brother, a laser beam against a block of half-melted ice. “For Killua,” she says.

Leorio’s stomach twists. She’s just a girl. A girl with the power to rip open reality just to watch the lights change color in her hands, but a girl all the same. And her family wanted to lock her away.

No wonder Killua looks like his heart is tearing him apart from the inside out, shattered into a thousand shards and still breaking. He tugs his sister into a tight hug, whispering something in her ear that makes her giggle and relax against him. When she pushes back, her eyes are blue and exhausted, her face pale and pink once again as she passes out in her brother’s arms.

“We need to go,” Killua says, quiet enough that Leorio has to strain to hear him over the noise of the Crossroads. Gon nods, wobbling precariously as he stands.

A cold sweat breaks out across Leorio’s neck, a feeling of worry that usually appears right before Gon does something stupid that ends up with someone walking around with their arm in a sling. It’s probably not the best sign that Leorio takes his roommate’s idiotic recklessness as a familiar comfort in this bizarre, mindboggling library.

Leorio holds out a hand to stabilize him. “You okay?”

Despite obviously being not even close to okay, Gon nods again and teeters off as fast as he can. Tiny flowers grow, blossom, and wither in his steps. Even the flower in Killua’s hair falls apart before Leorio’s eyes, petals rotting to dust before they even hit the ground.

Killua grimaces as he scoops his sister up. “Idiot,” he says. “Come on, old man. You’re something close to a doctor, maybe you can…”

Kurapika stands abruptly. “I’m coming as well. Melody, would you keep an eye here?”

Almost before she acknowledges it, the librarian takes off after Gon, weaving through the crowd with ease and grace Leorio can’t hope to replicate. He makes up for it by simply bulldozing through the crowd, long legs making up lost ground almost immediately to catch up with Kurapika. By the time they pass back through the archway they’d come through before, the dense slam of bodies and sensations has thinned considerably, and it continues to wane as they make their way back through the corridor. Everyone is at the party, laughing and drinking and singing and dancing the night away. 

It doesn’t take long to reach the portal Gon had left earlier, with both teenagers standing obstinately in front of it, as though staring at it long enough will get it to open.

“You should wait, Gon,” Leorio says.

“The deal we made, if we’re home before dawn, she’s safe,” Killua says. “If not…”

“You’ll make it,” Gon says. He stretches out his hands towards the pebbled spot on the wall. The golden tattoos swirl into life, stretching up his neck and across his cheeks. He looks like he’s about to fall apart at any moment, lines creasing across his face with the strain.

Kurapika steps in firmly. “Gon,  _ you _ can’t.”

Brown eyes flash golden, and the Road opens, saltbrine and humid air billowing out of the hole in reality masquerading as a hole in the wall, before it closes back up again in a rush. Gon steps back, breathing hard. He manages through gritted teeth, “I have to, Killua--”

Kurapika grimaces. “Killua must go back on his own. You barely opened the portal, you’ll never be able to walk it and support two humans. You’ll have to get back another way.”

“It’s almost sunrise. He doesn’t have another Road,” Killua says. “And if he waits here too long, my brother will find him. He’ll take him apart to get me back.”

“I won’t let him,” Gon says, and Killua looks too tired to fight.

Rather than letting this continue, Kurapika untangles a chain from his hand, the pocketwatch glimmering in the colorful lamps. A second chain loops around it until the small silver ball and the pocketwatch bouncing off each other in a ringing chime. “Gon, there is another Road available to you, one I have set aside for my own use tonight. You go, and then I will make use of it.”

Leorio frowns. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

A sharp shake of the librarian’s head cuts Leorio off before he can get started. “All that matters is this is the best option. Killua, will you be able to make it back home without Gon?”

“I should. I have a...thing.” Whatever the thing is, mentioning it makes Killua turn pink.

“A thing,” Leorio says flatly.

Killua turns from pink to red. “A  _ grounding object  _ Gon gave to me, alright? It’ll make sure I get out the right side of the Road. And I’ll wake up Nanika, to keep the Road stable while we’re on it. You get someone to open the portal, we’ll be fine.”

Gon looks entirely dissatisfied with this plan, especially when he turns back to the librarian. “Kurapika, I can’t let you.”

“You can, and you will. You don’t have much say in the matter.” Kurapika flicks open his pocketwatch once more, grimacing. “We also don’t have much time. Killua, through the Road, quickly.”

Both teenagers look like they’re about to protest, Gon’s heels already digging into the leaf-covered floor and Killua’s eyes flashing. But Alluka stirs, tearing her brother’s attention back to her and away from the argument. Nanika’s black eyes peek over Killua’s back, and she says something to her brother that Leorio can’t hear.

“Yeah, I’m going,” Killua says, every word pulled out of him with barbed wire.

Gon tugs a thin chain out from around Killua’s neck so a pendant shaped like a fish hook rests against his heart. It glows softly at Gon’s touch. “I’ll be home soon, Killua,” he says.

“You’d better be, or I’m coming back for you.” Gon gently bumps his fist against Killua’s in acknowledgment before stepping back, arm outstretched and grasping at the air before the portal. His hair seems to grow, long and dark and blinking in and out of existence. Leorio squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. 

When he opens them again, Kurapika has his chainless hand pressed against the wings of Gon’s shoulder blades, both of them breathing in time. This time when the Road opens, brine and heat mixes with a brisk breeze, like summer and autumn winds simultaneously overlapping. Killua glances back. Leorio can’t see Gon’s face, but whatever it is, Killua resolutely ducks his head and steps onto the Road.

Kurapika steps back a moment after the pebbled surface returns to bricked wall, the only reminder of the portal in the hot air still floating through the corridor. Gon rests his head against the wall and breathes, and Leorio can feel his exhaustion even across the corridor. And then he starts sliding down the wall. 

It takes half a step too far to catch him, legs folding in on themselves. Leorio loops an arm around his shoulders, half-carrying and half-dragging the half-conscious body as his roommate murmurs a protest that Leorio utterly ignores. His body is too hot, almost boiling to the touch, and the skin Leorio touches doesn’t feel solid at all, more like a water pellet or dry ice. But it’s impossible to tell if that’s a side effect of the Road, an overextension of Gon’s power, or just how Gon is without any magic to keep up appearances. Whatever it is, it can’t be good--but Gon overextending himself to the point of needing Leorio’s help standing is remarkably familiar. 

“C’mon Gon, let’s get you home,” he says. His roommate mutters a sleepy affirmative, and Leorio turns back to Kurapika. “Where we going?”

Doubt creases Kurapika’s eyebrows momentarily, so brief Leorio thinks he’s imagined it. “Back to the Crossroads,” he says. “The Road is inside.”

“But you said there can’t be Roads inside the Crossroads.”

“Any  _ new  _ Roads.” Kurapika frowns at the falling yellow leaves. “Come.”

\----

Kurapika leads them back towards the Crossroads, veering around the edges of the crowd and keeping mostly to the walls. The party is still in full swing, loud and raucous even as it grows closer to dawn. An open grassy lawn near the center is overflowing with dancers swaying in a dizzying flurry of movement. Occasional flashes of color or light catch Leorio’s eyes, flickering in time with the beat that reverberates in his chest. It’s nothing Leorio’s ever seen before, a dance that’s not a dance but an incessant rhythm, filling the dancers from their feet to the ceiling above them. Leorio doesn’t even like dancing all that much, but it wouldn’t hurt to try…

Gon’s voice pierces through the music, exhausted but almost painfully loud. “You don’t wanna go there,” he says.

Leorio is abruptly aware of how close the dancers are, almost close enough to touch, and he bounces back a few steps closer to the wall. They stop in a quiet alcove offset from the main party, sound muffled from the press of stalls and whatever quirk in the shape of the massive room. “Right. Thanks, buddy. I wasn’t paying attention.” 

“‘sokay. They just like dancing. Can’t help being magic.”

Given the circumstances, it’s hard to not chuckle at that. “Can’t help being magic, unless you’re hiding it from your roommate?”

Because he’s still supporting most of Gon’s weight, Leorio can feel his roommate go stiff as a board. He takes the opportunity to let Gon settle back on his own feet, arm still held out in support. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Gon says. He’s not meeting Leorio’s eyes. “It was part of the deal I made with President Netero. I could work for the greenhouse and for campus and have access to the Crossroads, but I couldn’t tell anyone about the fae.”

Leorio takes a deep breath, a frown surfacing nonetheless. “Why? Killua knew. Knows. And this isn’t exactly something new.”

Gon shrugs, still staring at the ground. “Killua’s family works with the fae, and we already knew each other from before. You deserved to know, Leorio, and after Netero died I didn’t  _ need _ to keep it a secret, even with everything happening and you so busy and then the news about Alluka…”

“So you did anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Gon repeats, voice tiny and almost inaudible against the din. He shuffles from foot to foot. “Are you angry?”

Angry is definitely one word for how Leorio feels. If Gon’d told him this twenty four hours ago, he almost certainly would have been angry with a side of completely confused. But with everything else going on, and how this whole night has been, it’s lost in a jumble. Leorio regrets not keeping a list for all of the questions he’s going to have for later. He sighs. “I can wait to be mad til we’re back home and get some sleep. But you and me need to have a talk. Deal?” 

Relief washes palpably over Gon, and he gives Leorio a small smile. “Deal.”

“Good. Because I--”

Leorio is cut off as Kurapika strides back towards them, Melody hot on his heels. He’s too slim to make it as heavy-footed as he does, like his shoes are made out of two-ton blocks instead of sleek black leather. “Kurapika, what are you planning?” Melody asks, almost jogging to keep up with the librarian. 

He flexes one hand, the one covered in chains, as though making sure it still moves. “I’m ensuring all of our projects are sufficiently completed before the sun rises.”

Leorio mutters, “It’s not my fault that the sun controls magic. Which is ridiculous--”

Kurapika scowls and smacks his hand against the wall of the closest stall, chains glowing as a sturdy wooden door appears. “No less ridiculous than outright ignoring the seasons themselves. Or pretending they don’t affect you.”

That earns a glare from both Gon and Leorio, but neither of them say anything about it. Leorio imagines it’s a mutual realization that anything they could say would only get turned on them ten times worse. But Melody approaches the doorframe, small hand tracing the doorframe carefully. The gesture doesn’t seem to do anything, although the wood darkens where her finger passes.  “Where does this go?” she asks.

Kurapika’s keyring appears back in his hand, this time only a single blackened key on the ring. “The center of the Crossroads.”

Melody pulls her hand back sharply, head snapping to an indifferent Kurapika. “We can’t go there,” she says. 

“You will, or Gon and Leorio won’t leave until the Solstice is over,” Kurapika says. “Not in Gon’s condition.”

“Why not? Is this another human thing?” Leorio asks.

“It’s…” Gon frowns, reaching towards the door as well. It crackles and he pulls his hand back as though shocked. Had it been anyone else, Leorio suspects their hair would be standing on end. “There’s too much in it. All of the Roads are in there.”

“Then we should be able to find a way out, right?”

Gon shakes his head. “No, it’s… a circle? It’s like when you make a circle from a whole bunch of lines. Because circles keep going in circles, so if you want to get out of it you have to make it stop being a circle. But if the circle stops being a circle, then it’s not a circle anymore.”

Leorio feels his eyelid twitch. “The library is a circle.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

The eyelid twitches again, only more violently. “And this would...break. The library.”

“I--” Gon glances at Melody, who shakes her head, and then to Kurapika, whose face is expressionless but seems to scowl all the same. More worrisome is the red tinge to his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t really want to find out. But it’ll be okay. I can hide in the library until tomorrow, and the Zoldycks won’t come after me if I’m careful.”

“But my exam…” Leorio protests weakly. Gon’s face falls, not meeting Leorio’s eyes. It’s so stupid, to be worrying over a test when his friend’s on the verge of collapse, but dammit Leorio has to hold onto  _ something.  _ Especially as Gon, now that Killua is safe, doesn’t seem to be caring much about himself. “And what if they do find you?”

“I’ll be okay,” Gon says again.

“Oh, that might be a good question to answer,” a terribly familiar voice purrs from directly behind Leorio. He jumps and skitters back, shoes slipping across the cobbled floor of the Crossroads, and nearly crashes into his roommate. Hisoka smiles in a way he obviously thinks is pleasant, head still stretched upwards slightly like he’d been about to bite off Leorio’s ear. 

Not a pleasant image. Not a pleasant smile. Not a pleasant… anything, really. “Hisoka! Didn’t you want to enjoy the Solstice or something?” Leorio says, ignoring how his knees shake. 

The smile stays in place, although Hisoka’s blue eyebrows twitch upwards slightly. “I certainly am enjoying myself. The small floutist was particularly excellent tonight. The melody smelled of regret and loss. Very timely for a Winter Solstice.”

“Thank you,” Melody says, voice unwavering. If not for how tightly her hands clasp at each other, Leorio would think she’s not scared at all. 

“No, thank you. It’s rare I get to enjoy such sounds, even as hidden as I was.” Hisoka flips out a pair of cards, a four of clubs and a ten of hearts, and hands them to Melody. She does not smile, although she noticeably withdraws as Hisoka shifts his attention away from her. “And look at this lovely fruit, although without his partner. Where did your human go, Gon?”

The air around Gon grows thick and dense, and Leorio tastes a storm. “I’m not a fruit. And Killua’s Killua’s, not anyone else’s.”

“But you are almost ripe for plucking. So close now.” Hisoka traces a pointed fingernail down his cheek, eyes gliding over Leorio as though he’s not even there. Which should not be annoying at all, Leorio knows he should be glad to be out of notice of the clown. But he finds his feet stepping in front of his roommate protectively, as though he and his bag of notes can somehow protect a glowing, impossibly strong, completely exhausted fae roommate.

Kurapika’s eyes narrow dangerously, a single chain looping around his wrist as he pushes open the blackened door. A gust of cold blows out of it, tangling with the hot air around Gon in a dizzying mix of summer and winter. “We do not have time for this. I will make you leave in an instant if you have no purpose in being here other than mischief,” he says.

“You are not the only one with outstanding debts, Lord Librarian,” the clown purrs. “And I am not here to pluck any fruit. I’m collecting for Illumi Zoldyck, to finding his brother and his brother’s companion as he is unavailable for such travel at this moment.” He smiles, all teeth and painted lips and sharp angles. “I have located one. And imagine what his friend will do to get him back.”

Behind Leorio, Gon’s teeth bare in a snarl, golden light swirling around him. The colorful mess of the Crossroads seems dim and distant compared to the penumbra of blinding sunlight, Gon’s form dense and faded, and the sound of dancing and music shatters for a moment into whistling winds. “Stay away from Killua.”

“You should be more worried about yourself, island stormchild. Illumi Zoldyck will pay handsomely for you. And your darling partner, even more. Is he home already? Or is the chase still on?”

“You fucking--” is all Gon manages to get out before Leorio unceremoniously scoops him up around the waist and hauls him over a shoulder. He’s too shocked to resist the sudden movement, even as Leorio hightails it into the empty black doorway.

Kurapika snaps the door shut with Hisoka’s giggles echoing behind them, and Leorio dumps his roommate on the smooth onyx floor of...wherever the “center of the Crossroads” is supposed to be. Leorio hisses a curse at the scalding temperature of Gon’s skin, enough to burn Leorio’s hand. “What the hell are you thinking?” he demands, trying futilely to blow on his hands.

“I don’t want him near Killua,” Gon says between heavy breaths. His eyes are closed and forehead streaked with sweat, the glow of his tattoos sharp against the black surroundings.

Leorio plops down next to his roommate. The floor is cold enough that resting his palms against it feels pleasant, taking some of the edge off of the burns. He says, “None of us want him near Killua. But Killua’s safe, you already made sure of that. Him and his sister.”

“Oh, you’re right,” he says like he forgot. Leorio wants to pull his hair out. Why do people want to fight Hisoka so badly they turn into terrifying rage monsters. No, that’s the wrong question--Leorio knows exactly why people want to fight Hisoka, and the clown would probably love to fight them. The question at hand is why are they doing it in front of  _ Leorio.  _ All Leorio’s wanted is to go home. Take the stupid test that got him in this mess in the first place. Maybe wring Mizaistrom’s brain out a little. Maybe wring Kurapika’s brain a little.

Or maybe just get him to talk a little more. 

That’s a problem for another time. “Where are we?” he asks. 

“The center within the Crossroads,” Kurapika says. 

Leorio gnashes his teeth and reconsiders the whole wringing brains idea. “For once, please, stop being mysterious and whatever and just tell me!” he says, standing so he can use his height to his advantage and look down his nose at the blond librarian. Kurapika barely even blinks.

“It appears Kurapika has reorganized the center of the Crossroads,” Melody says, voice colored with a timbre of horror. “Kurapika, what have you done?”

“I’ve done nothing but find the place all Roads come to and open it a little. It simply took time.”

“But your work… Your  _ life…” _ She pauses, oversized front teeth biting into her lip. “This is more than a Road. If you leave this way, you can’t come back. Gon’s right, this will collapse everything if it goes wrong.”

Kurapika grimaces, earring glittering in unseen light. “I’ve been here for  _ decades, _ Melody. My time is long since up. And if it means using everything at my disposal, then that’s what it takes.” He glances back at his pocketwatch, which ticks impossibly loudly in the black chamber. “Including the power of the Solstice. This Road will close after the sun rises. Gon, you must leave now. If you know where to go, it will take you there. Don’t ask questions.”

Melody shakes her head fiercely. “You can’t do this, Kurapika, your family--”

“Deserves to be put to rest somewhere they won’t be remnants of power shoved into stones to be passed about like party trinkets or traded for yet more lives. Give me the eyes, Leorio.”

“Eyes?”

Kurapika holds out his hand emphatically, eyes burning a furious red. “What you were to hold onto. The bag of stones, in your briefcase.” 

And there resting at the top of Leorio’s briefcase, as they’ve been all night, is the leather bag from Kurapika’s office, from what feels like years ago. It sits heavy in his hand, the brown leather warm and almost vibrating against his skin. Carefully, almost unthinking, Leorio opens the top of the bag. 

The most beautiful red glow comes out of the bag, a gentle light that would feel more at home on a fall breeze than any of the anger billowing out of Kurapika. Leorio could call them rubies, but no gemstone has ever looked so perfectly round, in such a prismatic shade of crimson. No noise comes from them, but it sounds like they hum a tune as they clack against each other. They’re enchanting, pulling Leorio’s fingers towards them until he consciously balls his hand into a fist. These aren’t his, they’re Kurapika’s. Or Kurapika’s family’s. But he leaves the top open, the glow glimmering against Gon’s golden eyes and the black light of the Road.

“These don’t look like any eyeballs I’ve ever seen,” he hears himself say. “And I’ve seen a lot of eyeballs.”

Melody covers her mouth, but not before an astonished staccato breath escapes. “Kurapika, those are your family’s eyes. What are you doing?”

“Going home.” Kurapika gestures again, hard enough to make the chains on his hand clank against each other. “And not coming back. Leorio, hand the bag over and let Gon take you home.”

“But I don’t want you to leave,” Leorio says.

Shock passes through Kurapika’s wide red eyes in a tremor, almost too fast to track.

Leorio backtracks almost immediately, stuttering, “And also you haven’t answered my question.” There’s a moment, when the shock vanishes, when Leorio thinks that maybe Kurapika believes him, that it’ll work out. That he’ll make his exam, and come back, and get to talk to the librarian outside of whatever this whole night has been. But then it’s gone behind a bleak smile. “I suppose I should thank you, Leorio. It was… Almost enough to forget for a little while.” He sets his jaw, daring Leorio to meet his eyes. “But this is not your choice.”

Gon shakes his head fiercely, mouth set in a thin line. “I can help, Kurapika, I promise. Wait until summer, and I can find anything!”

“You think I didn’t spend years looking?” Kurapika snaps, cold and hard. “I haven’t even found all of the eyes, it’s impossible. The Crossroads offer everything, and this is the only way, the only  _ time. _ I refuse to wait another year. And Gon, you can barely even stand. How could you help?” 

“But you looked by yourself, if you let me--”

The blackness around them shudders, and Kurapika’s pocketwatch ticks ominously, loud and echoing as being inside of a bell. Melody and Gon stumble towards Kurapika, who flings his arm backwards. A silver chain streaks out and into its own circle directly behind Melody, leaving a glittering path it in the darkness. “Melody. This will take you back to Palm’s. I’m sure she’s worried.”

She shakes her head. “She’ll be worried about you, too.”

“We’re not leaving!” Gon adds, and does his best to stand firm. He only wobbles a little. But the room shudders again, flashes of sunlight cracking in flashes through the onyx floor like streaks of lightning, and it sends Gon stumbling to his knees.

Kurapika scowls and takes a step towards Leorio. He steps back. “The eyes, Leorio. Now.”

“Leorio, don’t--!”

“Kurapika, please, it’s not right, it’s dangerous--”

“This isn’t yours!”

The floor breaks with dawn as Kurapika lunges at Leorio, hands grabbing at the leather bag and tugging them from his grip. They both go tumbling, and the still-open bag spills between their hands, red gemstone eyes falling out and scattering along the floor in a clatter of vibration and unheard echoing song.

Kurapika and Leorio stare at each other for a long moment.

And then the floor disappears into a funnel, flickering red gemstones sinking into the blackened hole and dragging the dawn light with it. Distantly, as though through a wall of cotton, there’s a noise like a thousand books being ripped in half, interspersed with screams and shrieks in decibels that shouldn’t exist. “Kura--” Leorio starts.

Firm hands grab him by the collar of his shirt and bodily lift him off of the sinking ground. “Get home!” Kurapika shouts, and then Leorio is flying through the air, landing heavily on Melody as they fall into the silver portal. The screaming, ripping noises become earsplitting, tearing into the sides of Leorio’s head and taking the world with them.

Gon dives into the center of the darkness, streaks of gold as he reaches out towards Kurapika.

And then there’s nothing but darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun duuuuun. 
> 
> heeeeey everyone, I'm so incredibly sorry this is late, next week is completely done and edited already, so will be on time see you all next week!
> 
> or come by [tumblr!](https://xyliane.tumblr.com/)


	5. Where Many Paths and Errands Meet

Leorio opens his eyes to find his face smooshed against frozen concrete and snowflakes gently drifting into his nose. He shivers, joints aching far more than a night out in the cold would cause. For a bitterly long moment, Leorio wonders if he  _ was _ thrown out into the street, unable to pay rent or food or university bills for too long. Back to square one, after all these years of work.

No, Gon would never allow that to happen. The kid cares too much, always going out of his way to help people he thinks need the extra push. 

Gon. _ _

_ Kurapika. _

Leorio hisses a curse, trying to push himself back to a seated position. He’s not wearing his coat--and damn, but he  _ liked _ that coat--but the same gloves he’d been wearing before entering the Road are warm and soft against his skin. It’s better than nothing.

“Leorio, you’re awake,” a familiar voice says, soft and mournful as church bells. Melody appears at his side, small arms wrapped in a thick wool sweater. She gently helps him back into a seated position before offering him a steaming mug of something warm and fragrant. 

Out of everything miserable-feeling at this moment, most miserable is that his  _ ass _ is cold. Thin, bony asses are deeply unpleasant against frozen snow-covered concrete. “Thanks,” he says, and downs half the mug before realizing it’s herbal tea. He offers it back, wishing he could will it into a nice highly caffeinated americano. Or hell, just a straight liter of espresso shots. 

“You finish it. I’ll get another cup,” she says. “Do you remember what happened?”

It all feels like a dream--the library, the books, the Solstice party. But Leorio remembers it all clearly, especially the last moments, watching his roommate reach for Kurapika as they fall, red stones scattering and flickering out into deep darkness. Stumbling backwards, flung out of the Road before it sucked him in, too. 

The Crossroads falling into the darkness, taking Gon and Kurapika with them.

Leorio’s not sure how he ended up out here, shivering and made of more ice than flesh, but it’s real. Just as real as the dead-looking trees stretching across the street, branches like bony fingers against the dark brick of the buildings. Just as real as how the stairs that had led down to the library’s entrance have vanished, along with any appearance that this street had held the brick building with windows that seemed to stare into Leorio’s heart from behind velvet curtains. Even the slight hill has leveled out, leaving an poorly maintained cobbled street behind.

It’s not even like the Fourth Street Library’s been destroyed. It’s more as though it had never existed in the first place.

“Did anyone else make it out?” he asks.

Melody nods. “Most of the fae are fine. They’ve either gone home on their own or are looking for secondary routes out of the city. All the Roads come--came here, but many have additional entrances in other places. Some of the fae, and any other humans, have no other Roads home, but they’re simply a little shaken. They’ll recover in time.” 

Leorio feels a small weight lift of his chest. At least no one else got caught up in the mess. “And what about…?”

She tries to put on what might be a brave face. It makes her look tired, lost. “Gon hasn’t come out,” she says. “I worry he tried to rescue Kurapika and was sucked in as well. I have no idea where he might have gone.”

“And Kurapika?”

All he gets is a shake of Melody’s head. “I think he’s been planning this for months, if not years,” she says quietly. She trembles, like she’s trying to contain an earthquake beneath her sweater. “I should have known. He’s never gotten over what happened with his family. But tonight, he seemed…” She peers up at Leorio, black eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “He seemed happy tonight, happier than he’s been.”

“It’s not your fault,” Leorio says, a hand on her shoulder. It’s thinner than he expected, carrying far more weight than her size should.

She nods again, and lets Leorio pull her into a tight hug, warm against the freezing dawn air. If she messes up his already rumpled shirt, or he has to wipe away his own tears before they freeze on his cheeks, neither of them comment.

“I should help the other humans find transportation home,” she says. “There should be someone else on their way from campus to help--Mizaistrom, you know him.”

“Yeah, I do.” Although really, not as well as Leorio had thought. “I need to ask him about… I don’t know, but I need to.”

“You also have an exam to get to.” She pushes at his knees and hips, making him wobble to his feet. “That was the whole point, right? Leave by dawn, pass your exam. You’ve worked hard enough for it.”

Leorio swallows heavily. “I guess. But I should help. Maybe let someone crash on my couch if they need to, or maybe the lab if they don’t mind Cheadle on the warpath, or…”

Another firmer shove, this one at the small of his back, sends him stumbling a few steps towards the end of the street. “I’ll take care of it, Leorio,” Melody says. 

“But people got hurt, or are lost. I want to help.”

“This isn’t your job, Leorio,” Melody says not unkindly. But it hurts all the same. “Please. Kurapika would have wanted you to succeed.”

“I…” Leorio trails off, staring back at where the library should be, where it was. Where it’s not. 

Suddenly his talk about saving lives, helping people, the same thing that Kurapika had been so incredulous of, seems foolish. The dream of a child hurt because someone he loved was taken away. What even  _ could _ he do? He’s just one guy. One stupid, tall human with an aching heart, a missing roommate, and a test he’s probably going to fail.

“I’ll be back later,” he says. Melody’s lips draw into a thin line, but she doesn’t try to dissuade him. For that, Leorio is grateful. 

“Good luck,” she says. Leorio can’t even bring himself to say goodbye, so he shoves his hands in his pockets and drifts off down the street, hunching his shoulders against the cold and the long, long walk back to the bus stop.

\-----

There isn’t time to go home before the exam, so Leorio simply takes the bus back to campus, nodding off for a solid fifteen minutes despite the cobbled streets thumping his head against the window the entire way. He nearly misses the stop as it is, and is rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he tries to jog back up the sweeping slopes around the medical buildings.

Thankfully, no one is in the lab other than a few half-awake undergrad automatons. They call a sleepy, “Hey, Leorio,” and even that small effort makes one almost drop a box of records--the ones that go on turntables, not the seemingly infinite paper ones. They’re probably Netero’s, because Leorio’s never seen Cheadle pull out a pair of headphones for work, let alone a record player.

There had been a record player at Palm’s cafe, filling the space with music before Melody went on. Leorio wonders if there had even been a record spinning under the needle, or if it was just more of the same ever-so-slightly off nature of the whole library.

Leorio makes it over to the sink, shoves any important or soakable objects out of the way, and splashes as much water on his face as he can. He’ll have to shave later, he has no idea where any of the various things he’s migrated to the lab have gone in the mess of moving boxes and general end-of-term chaos. 

“You look miserable,” Cheadle says from behind him.

Why are people always sneaking up behind him? More specifically, why are  _ short _ people always sneaking up behind him? At least it’s not Gon, who’s not exactly short but has ended up with an elbow to the face more than once. Except Gon has been sent to who knows where, and Leorio really cannot think about that right now. “Dr. Yorkshire!” he splutters, only barely avoiding splashing water all over her. “You’re in early?”

“It’s barely eight,” she says, smile quirking her lips. She seems far more awake than Leorio can even conceive of being at this moment, greenish bangs pushed out of her eyes with a thick winter hat. Her glasses glint as she says, “Were you studying all night?”

Leorio rubs his eyes behind his glasses, hating how everything aches. “Sorry, I uh. It’s been a long morning.”

“I can tell.” She reaches behind him to turn off the faucet, offering him a towel. “You’ve been working all week, I expect you’ll do fine.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Leorio mutters into the soft white fluff. 

Cheadle raises an eyebrow dangerously, the usual sign she’s about to ask a question about what Leorio had thought was useless minutiae and is actually a key component to deciphering a vaccine. “Leorio, what  _ are _ you doing here this early?”

“What are you doing here early?” he demands, too tired to keep from being snappish. He almost immediately regrets it, and braces for impact.

But Cheadle doesn’t snap back at him. Instead, she studies him from nose to knees, taking in his rumpled appearance and unshaven face with growing wariness. “It turns out that the university acting president also has to deal with unforeseen catastrophes, even if they happen just before dawn on exam day,” she says. “Netero...was less than helpful on leaving any sort of guidance, and there’s only so much Mizaistrom and I can do. Even less when Pariston is being as obfusticating as usual on top of taking the damn holiday off.”

“Netero? You mean the former president?”

She smiles, and it’s almost like she has toothy fangs. “May the old asshole rest in peace,” she says. “Mizaistrom was suspiciously silent on where you went last night, Leorio. Where did you go?”

Momentarily, Leorio considers saying he was out partying the night before the biggest exam of his career (which is...not entirely untrue), or that he’d been too busy with the move to study (also not a lie). But not only is that unfair to Cheadle, trying to assume blame before the test even happens, it’s also not at all what he wants to know. And with Mizai not anywhere close, Cheadle’s the only one Leorio can ask.

“Do you know anything about fairies?” is probably not the most intelligent question to ask, but dammit, Leorio can count the hours of sleep he’s gotten the last few days on one hand, and that was because he was knocked unconscious, not because he had any sort of rest. 

Cheadle, the greatest of advisors and most benevolent of department heads, does not actually laugh at him. Instead, she whistles sharply, the noise shattering the haze of exhaustion floating over Leorio’s brain. On the other side of the lab, the two undergrads actually jump, boxes and records tumbling to the floor. “Take the morning off,” Cheadle says to them.

They blink owlishly at her as though she’s suggested they grow wings and jump off Yorknew Tower. “Shoo!” she says, making a scurrying motion with her hands. They seem to get the point at that, scampering off and out of the lab. 

She waits until the door thumps closed, locking automatically behind them with an electronic clunk, before turning back to Leorio. She smiles wryly, nose twitching. “Yes, I know about the fae,” she says. “Yet another thing Netero neglected to tell me about before his death, but Mizaistrom’s been helping ease the transition somewhat. He is the only human qualified in both fae and human law, and we’re lucky to have him.”

So Mizai was aware of the night, and the library, and why the night and the library went together poorly. Leorio is going to kill him the next time they run into each other. Or at least take his stupid spotted hat and throw it under a bus. “Am I the only one who didn’t know?” he asks.

At least Cheadle sounds sympathetic when she says, “There are fewer people that know than those who do. I was planning on telling you after this semester, as I need someone to help manage the medical department. Mizaistrom can only do so much, and the undergrads are...well. Undergrads.”

She sighs the word with the same amount of enthusiasm usually reserved for overenthusiastic puppies who have been playing for two hours and still want another round of fetch. 

“As it is, I’ll assume then you were at the Solstice last night. I woke up to alarms in several different languages and a few that came from flowers and cats, which was not a pleasant experience. I don’t own any flowers or cats, and they simply appeared  _ everywhere..." _ She shudders and brushes phantom petals off her arms. “Anyways, I sorted it out the best I could, but what Melody told me was incredibly bizarre. I sent Mizaistrom to help, but he has not yet gotten back to me. Can you tell me what happened?”

Slowly, Leorio picks his way over everything he can remember from last night, starting with the Compendium and ending with waking up on the concrete. He only briefly brings up Gon--the mention of who, Leorio notes, gets nothing more than a bemused headshake from his advisor, so that’s another question to ask his idiot roommate if-- _ when _ he reappears--and tries to avoid talking about Kurapika at all. But he can’t help but keep coming back to everything the librarian did for him, rescuing him from evil clowns and telling him information freely, no matter what he protested about Rules and Deals. 

The thought of never seeing him again, even just to thank him, isn’t one Leorio likes at all.

When he’s done, briefly skimming over the mind-numbing darkness and emphasizing the cold, cold concrete (and the whole missing library thing), Cheadle silently fetches them both steaming mugs of coffee from her personal coffee maker rather than the communal sludge, and Leorio guzzles the caffeine without even tasting it. He doesn’t exactly feel more conscious, but the warmth helps feel more human.

“I’m interested in this...Compendium,” she says. 

Leorio shrugs. “It’s not much use if the whole library’s gone forever,” he says. 

She acknowledges the point with a sharp jerk of her chin, which she then props up on the flat of her hand. “In any case, there’s nothing I can do other than wait for the Crossroads to respawn. If what you say is true, the Roads will fix themselves eventually, and there will be another entrance somewhere near here.”

“But not the library,” Leorio says. “Not…”

“Gon’ll be alright,” she says. “He’s gotten into worse scrapes. I think.”

“I don’t know about that. He’s fallen off buildings and shattered every bone in his arm, not gotten lost in a multidimensional portal. And what about--” Leorio cuts himself off and sticks his nose as far into the coffee mug as possible. He really, really can’t think about Kurapika now.

It’s enough, though, that Cheadle stands, crossing the room briskly. “I can’t do anything,” she says again, pulling out a small keyring made of tarnished bronze. It looks strikingly familiar to the one Kurapika kept tucked up his sleeve, along with his pocket watch and ten million chains. Cheadle’s is merely in her pockets, like a normal person. 

Why doesn’t Kurapika just have pockets. That would save so much of Leorio’s brainpower.

The keys chime quietly against each other as she fishes out oher phone, scrunching her nose at whatever message she has and sending something quickly back. She looks expectantly at Leorio, motioning to the door with the keys. “Come on, Mr. Paladiknight, we don’t have all day.”

Right, the exam. Leorio pulls himself off of the lab stool and toddles after Cheadle, hunched over a little try to not appear quite as looming. Not that it helps, or that she’s in the least bit inconvenienced by the height discrepancy. The lecture hall is at the end of the corridor, smooth wooden floors giving way to carpeting as the number of windows increases and sunshine replaces fluorescent lights. The first few students are already straggling in, faces planted so firmly into their notes that they’ll probably have ink on their cheeks by the time the exam starts.

Instead of turning into the hall, Cheadle leads Leorio up the stairs and around the corner to the admin offices. “Dr. Yorkshire? Where are we going?”

“Somewhere I was hoping to get into yesterday,” she says, flipping through the keys until she finds the right one, gold with a little blue sticker on the end. She mutters what might be a prayer and forces the key into the lock. It jiggers a little, but doesn’t budge.

Cheadle lets out a long-suffering sigh and shoves her glasses up her nose. “I’ve tried every key I’ve been given, and I still can’t get into Netero’s damn office since Pariston locked it and ate the damn key as far as I can tell,” she says. “It’s been a month, and I know the president was hiding things from me. I was hoping you might be able to help, with the whole…” She wriggles her fingers at Leorio, as though casting a spell at him.

It’s the most normal thing anyone’s requested of Leorio in what feels like years. He snorts and reaches into his bag, digging out his lockpicks. “This isn’t the only reason you hired me, right Doctor? For my skills as a petty thief?” he asks.

“Chop chop, Paladiknight, I don’t pay you for nothing.”

“No, you pay me to wrangle undergrads and unlock doors.” The lock’s not difficult--Leorio’s youngest siblings could have picked it in their sleep--but there’s a tension in the pins, almost as though the entire inside of the mechanism is made out of chewing gum. It could be Leorio’s imagination, but as he locks in the last pin, it twitches in the door with an almost bemused annoyance, snapping the thin metal lockpick neatly in half.

Leorio curses under his breath. He liked that pick. 

Cheadle doesn’t wait for Leorio to stand before striding into the office, hands on her hips as she glares around the musty room. It’s oddly sparse, just a few half-empty bookshelves, a decade-old monitor on an otherwise empty desk, and a scattering of post-its across the bay windows. A vase of bluebells catches the morning sun, blooming without a care to how long it’s been since anyone’s seen them.

“If I could, I’d bring Netero back from the grave just so I can kill him again,” Cheadle says, and opens the top drawer of the desk. A massive binder, the sort that contains manual for airplane engines or lines of red tape at a university, is the first thing that thunks to the desk, sending moths and dust mites scattering. “Leaves Pariston behind, forgets to leave anything useful within grabbing distance, locks away end of semester administrative procedures as well as the university records on the Roads… How he ever got anything done is beyond me. Mizai said you should check the shelves. Something about a deal being up.”

She keeps muttering curses at the dead as she rifles through his things. Another few books, as well as a miniature globe and a statue of a buddha, are also tossed onto the desk. Not seeing anything he can do, Leorio takes the time to look through the bookshelves, most of the books either instructions for meditation or joke books. He’s not entirely sure which ones are which. At one end of the shelf is a leather ball, an old sports memento or maybe a child’s toy. It looks like it’s been punched several times as well as set on fire, enough to scorch the color from patches of the fabric. Leorio didn’t know Netero very well, but the former president did always seem like an oddball.

At the other, set into a gilded metal mask and glowing with a quiet light, are a pair of brilliant red stones, identical to the ones that had spilled out of Leorio’s bag and into the Roads.

_ Kurta eyes. _

Leorio picks up the mask, hoping to see more of the stones hiding under its nose or behind its mouth. Instead, the spheres fall out as though they had merely been gently set into the metal, not embed or inlaid with any skill. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of the mask, with earrings made of clear stones shining with a hundred colors glimmering out of its earlobes. The gems, the eyes can’t have been part of the original piece.

What Netero would have been doing with a pair of dead eyes is a question for another time. He needs to find Kurapika first, needs to show him… To tell him… 

Leorio has no idea. He just needs to.

When he looks up, he finds Cheadle staring at him, expression level. “Take the day off,” she says. 

“What about the exam?” Leorio blurts out.

Cheadle almost laughs, but catches herself. “Leorio, you’re so tired you’re making me exhausted. Even if you were mentally capable of taking my test, which I seriously doubt since you are zoning out in front of an empty bookshelf, you’re certainly not physically ready to sit for a three hour written.”

“But my grades…”

“I’m not only the professor administering the test, but I’m the head of the department and the acting president of the university. If I say you can take the test next week, not only is no one going to argue, but they can’t. Just like anything you take out of this office is my property and I can do with it as I like, including give strange red stones to my favorite overgrown lockpick” She makes a shooing motion with a manual she’s pulled out of the desk. It’s nearly as big as she is. “Now go. Get some rest and do what you think you need to. I’ll fail you if you don’t.”

Leorio closes his hand over the gemstones, his heart soaring. Maybe it’ll be alright. Maybe he can help. Maybe he’ll find Gon. Maybe Kurapika… 

Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

But maybe is better than nothing.

“Thank you, Cheadle,” he says from the bottom of his heart.

“Just don’t tell Pariston,” she says, and Leorio scurries out of Netero’s office as fast as his legs can take him, feeling better than he has all morning.

\-----

If Leorio could have, he wants to go straight back to the library, red stones in hand, and stomp up and down Fourth Street until the library reappears and lets him back in. Leorio’s always had a hard head, after all--and sometimes banging it against a problem directly is the best course of action.

Instead, he heads back to his apartment for a change of clothes, a snack, and an attempt at a power nap. It’s more likely to be twenty minutes on the couch with his mind racing, but if there’s one thing med school has taught him, it’s the value of the attempted power nap. He just has to close his eyes and… 

He must have actually passed out at least for a little while because the next thing Leorio sees is two pairs of identical blue eyes, one under straight black bangs and the other half-covered with white curls. Something smells like chocolate chip pancakes. “He’s up, Brother,” Alluka says.

“I can see that,” Killua grouses. The effect’s ruined by the relief on his face. “Hey, old man. It’s almost noon. How’d the test go?”

There has not been nearly enough time for sleep, and even the hour or two he must have gotten makes Leorio feel less rested and more like he was recently run over by a freight train. “I didn’t have to take it. Got sent home.”

“You fail or something?”

“It’s nice that you care, but no. Cheadle heard about the library.”

“The library? You mean the Solstice?” Killua’s eyebrows scrunch together, and he glances back to the bedrooms. “Where’s Gon? I haven’t seen him all morning”

Leorio considers closing his eyes and going right back to sleep. Instead, he braces himself to tell Killua everything that’d happened, much like what he’d given Cheadle. But Killua must see something on his face, because he turns white as a sheet. “You do know where Gon is, right?”

“I don’t,” Leorio says. “He… The library last night. Kurapika tried to do something, and Gon was there, and I think he thought he was helping. Whatever it was collapsed the Crossroads, and took both of them along with it.”

Killua wobbles on his feet. It seems horrifyingly as though he’s stopped breathing, his entire body corpse still. His sister latches onto his hand, her knuckles as white as Killua’s face with how firmly she grips it. “Brother--”

“Alluka, I… I shouldn’t have left him, He was already exhausted after leaving the mansion, I  _ knew _ he’d do something stupid, he always…” Killua trails off. Leorio’s never seen him like this, eyes vacant and shoulders folded in on themselves. Killua has always given a face of confidence to the point of arrogance, pretending like the world doesn’t weigh on his shoulders. The only times that mask cracks has been around Gon. Gon, who seems to make the world a little brighter, a little lighter, gives Killua an excuse to laugh. Even Leorio, who much to their mutual surprise, has become a close friend, still isn’t Killua’s  _ best _ friend. 

“There has to be a way to get him back,” Leorio says. “I don’t know how, or how much time we have, but we are  _ going _ to find him.”

“And how do you think we’re going to do that?” Killua snaps, abruptly furious. The force of anger makes Leorio stumble back half a step, not prepared for the teenager to draw up to his full height, fists clenched and body trembling with poorly contained emotions. “Don’t you think I would try? But we can’t get into the Roads. If the Crossroads are gone.  _ Gon _ is gone, and unless you turned into a fae in the middle of all this don’t you think--”

“Brother, I think I might know.”

Both Leorio and Killua turn to Alluka. She smiles hesitantly at the intensity of her brother’s stare. 

“Alluka, what are you planning?” Killua asks. 

“Not so much what, perhaps, as who.” She smiles again, not at anyone in particular. “It’s okay, you can come out.”

And her features flatten out, turning as white as unmarked paper. Even her eyelids vanish into gaping black holes, her mouth open onto nothing at all. It’s not like Gon growing flowers in his hands as his tattoos loop around themselves, or Kurapika’s glowing red eyes. Both of those felt like tangible things left just out of sight, that feel like they should have been noticed all along.

This feels like power, enough to turn the world inside out.

And it’s here inside his and Gon’s tiny apartment, black as the bottom of the end of the Roads.

Killua tries not to look as panicked as he obviously feels. “Nanika, now’s not a good...”

The girl turns her face towards Killua, movements jolty and awkward. The black hole of her mouth widens in a smile. “Killua,” she says. “I love Killua.”

It’s almost unnoticeable, but Killua trembles. “I...yes, I love you too,” he says.

The smile hole seems to brighten, and Leorio feels less like he’s looking at a terror even her own family tried to hide and more like a child given her first toy. “I love Killua.” She turns her head to Leorio, cocked just slightly too far to be healthy for a teenage girl’s neck. “Doctor. Nice.”

“That’s very kind of you to say.” It’s hard to keep his words level, but enough time around Cheadle (and enough misadventurous mishaps of Gon Freecss) has given Leorio a fair amount of practice at pretending to be calm when all he wants is to run for it. He kneels down so he’s just below eye height of the girl sharing Alluka’s body. “What do you...what does Alluka want?”

“Gon nice too,” Nanika says. “Find Gon?”

The grip Killua has on her hand tightens enough to break bone, but the girl doesn’t even seem to notice. “You can? Nanika, can you take us there?”

The black holes shutter abruptly, and Alluka’s features return back to where they were, cheeks flushed with effort. “She thinks so,” she says. “I’m sorry, she can’t help you find Kurapika, even with the Kurta eyes, Dr. Paladiknight.”

Leorio clamps his hand over his pocket protectively. “How does she know--Why not?”

She tilts her head, listening to an echo. “They’re...not hers, I think,” she says. “It’s hard to describe. But she-- _ we _ can help find someone that can. And that way, we can find Gon.”

A dozen different emotions mix on Killua’s face, a disorienting mix of hope and despair that ends somewhere in between them all. “You don’t have to do this, either of you,” he says quietly. 

His sister smiles fondly, poking him gently in the cheek. “It’ll be alright, Brother. I’m free here. Me and Alluka want to help. It’s our choice--not yours.”

“Alluka,” Leorio says. “Can you...can Nanika take us straight to Gon?”

She closes her eyes, concentrating. “She doesn’t know,” Alluka says, voice echoing a little. “But she wants to try.  _ I  _ want to try.” She glances at the still-silent Killua, then back to Leorio. “We want our brother to be happy, and no matter what he says, he wants you to be happy, too.”

“Do not,” Killua says weakly, for the sake of protest.

Leorio feels his eyes tear up all the same, and he scoops both Zoldycks into a hug, one that Alluka returns easily and Killua doesn’t reject. It’s the exhaustion. He hasn’t slept in more than a day, and all of this…

“Well, let’s not waste daylight,” he says. “Where do we start, Miss Zoldyck?”

She beams sunnily at him. “We need to go back to the library.”

\------

Leorio pays for all of their bus tickets with the last of his spare cash. Hopefully all of this magic will supernaturally return his pocket change, or at least get him his coat back. He misses it terribly in the cold, even moreso when they get off at Tenth and have to trek across the frozen city streets back to Fourth Street. He’s borrowing one of Gon’s coats, a monstrous green blob disguised as a winter jacket, and it’s too big at the shoulders and about a handspan too short to be comfortable. 

Alluka takes everything in with wide eyes and a gleeful smile. She’s wearing one of Gon’s green and orange hats with the fuzzball on top and Killua’s favorite wool coat, sleeves dangling to her knuckles. Killua himself has a shorter unseasonable jacket, but at least he caved into Leorio’s doctorly protests about wearing  _ anything _ on his head, that he’s got on a pair of black earmuffs and his usual thick gloves. Occasionally, Alluka tugs at her brother’s sleeve, demanding to know what one building is or why a park is there. Leorio knows full well that Killua has no idea, but the teenager smiles as he makes up a bullshit story. It’s almost a believable smile, too.

By the time they’re back at Fourth Street, Leorio’s teeth are chattering noisily against each other. Any sign of Melody or anyone else left over from the morning is long gone, even their footprints lost under the gently falling snow. “We’re here. Now what?” he asks the Zoldycks. 

Killua hasn’t let go of his sister’s hand. “You don’t have to do this,” he says again.

She reaches up and brushes snow from his hair, surprising a snort from her big brother. “Yes, I do. You smile better around Gon.”

Killua turns bright red, but doesn’t splutter or oppose it. Instead, on a signal Leorio doesn’t receive, he steps away from his sister, letting her approach the empty entrance to the street. 

“What’s she doing?” Leorio asks.

Killua shoves his hands in his pockets and tucks his chin into his collar. “Nanika’s going to force open a Road,” he says. “She wanted to do it through Gon’s usual portal at your apartment, but there’s too much interference, I guess. If she does it right, it’ll lead to the library, or to someone who knows where the library is.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Best case scenario, nothing happens and we’re shit out of luck. Worst, we end up lost on the Roads forever. Which as humans, is not recommended. It’s too easy to forget yourself. There are stories of intestines falling out of your ears, seeing the smell of rotting flesh, tasting nothing but screams…”

“I get the idea,” Leorio says, trying to strangle the very visceral images.

Killua smirks, but doesn’t say anything more. His eyes are still worried as Alluka glances behind her and gives them both a thumbs up. As she turns back, her face fades away, leaving nothing but Nanika’s empty black eyes.

With a deep breath, she reaches out and seems to snag on something, a loose thread or a spiderweb caught between the scraggly trees. She tugs it gently at first, spooling something around her wrist that Leorio can’t see. The soft winter breeze turns abruptly harsh, tugging at Leorio’s face and making Alluka’s hair whip back and forth. The beads in her hair clack together noisily.

Killua doesn’t budge, forcing himself to watch without further comment.

Nanika lets out a muffled shout, and the whole street seems to fracture, leaving behind not the shimmering portal Gon had used the night before, but a stained glass window made up of a thousand tiny mirrors, each one reflecting a street Leorio has never seen.

“Don’t let go,” Alluka says, and tugs both her brother and Leorio through the portal.

On the other side is all of Fourth Street, a stained glass window made of air and bright spring leaves, tangled together in a painting of Fourth Street as Leorio has never seen it. 

Fourth Street, not at the dead of winter, but in spring, the trees speckled with flower buds and pale green leaves, the dark gray brick buildings turned red in the sun. Summer heat, lining the street with dense shadows as the only respite from the boiling sun Leorio can somehow feel despite the brutal cold. And at the end of the street, autumn, leaves falling in little piles like the gingko leaves in the corridor of the library.

Throughout it all, both within reach and impossibly far away, the library melts between all four seasons, its entrance slowly sinking further and further into the ground. Killua reaches out to try to touch the building. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” she says quietly. “We’re still in the Roads. That’s just the memory. It’s not really there.”

“Then where is it? Where’s…” His expression falls, white bangs falling in front of his eyes. 

Leorio places a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find him. He has to be around here somewhere. He wouldn’t leave without you, not willingly.”

Killua swallows and shakes himself out of Leorio’s grip. 

And then a clown steps out of the trees, cards flipping back and forth between his hands all too casually. 

“Can you  _ make _ a normal entrance?” Leorio does not shriek, or curse, or nearly stumble flat onto his ass. That would be embarrassing.

Hisoka ignores him almost entirely, focusing instead on the two teenagers. “Young Zoldyck, I see you found your prize.”

Killua bristles, half-stepping in front of his sister. “She’s not a prize.”

“Simply affirming a point,” he says. “Your eldest brother is quite miffed, you know. His time limit is up, and he now owes me a favor.”

“Good. If you see him, tell him to fuck off,” Killua snaps. At his shoulder, Alluka sticks her tongue out, seemingly unaware or uncaring at the danger the clown is holding in his hands.

Unfortunately, the clown doesn’t seem to care either. The cards he’s flinging from hand to hand begin to dance around his arms, wilder and wider arcs that glimmer in the winter sunlight, forcing Leorio to look until the spinning makes him dizzy and disoriented. Leorio fights the urge to rub his eyes. “Look, Hisoka. After the crap you pulled last night, you shouldn’t be bothering us. Killua is out of your deal or whatever you did with his brother. We don’t have time for this.” Leorio squints into the blurring hands and sparkling nails.  “Besides, the only person that’s affecting is me, and it’s annoying.”

The clown’s toothy smile grows even more teeth. “You have learned, at least somewhat, learned thrice over.” The card shuffling returns to a more gravity-controlled form, and the ache behind Leorio’s forehead lessens. “As I said, I am merely here to confirm my suspicions. With the library gone, I am stuck here just as that thing is trapped within your sister, young Zoldyck.”

“She’s not trapped, Nanika wants to be here!” Alluka says. 

Golden eyes flash a deadly orange, and the beads in Alluka’s hair flutter in an unseen wind. Her features flatten oddly as though turned into putty against her cheeks, even if her eyes stay blue and aware. “That isn’t very nice, Mr. Magician,” she says. She glances at her brother and shakes her head. “He’s not going to help us.”

“Nanika wanted to ask  _ him _ for help?” Leorio splutters. “No way. No way in hell.”

If Hisoka had looked pleased before, he looks downright giddy at this point. Which is an incredibly disturbing look on him, especially when a too-long tongue flicks out to lick at his painted lips. Leorio can’t help but shudder. “Ooh, my dear. We will have fun.”

“No.” The word comes from both Zoldyck siblings, Killua’s hard and angry and Alluka’s…wistful, somehow. 

Leorio wants to ask about this, but the press of time is passing as the sun drifts overhead. “Hisoka, tell us whatever it is to get rid of you.”

“Straight to the point, alas.” Hisoka steps back, heels clicking against the brick. Leorio has to consciously remind himself that just because there is a little more distance between him and the clown doesn’t mean he couldn’t suddenly find a sharpened card in his jugular. “I merely want to return to the Roads, which I believe is simple enough for a creature such as that girl.”

“And what’s in it for us?” Killua asks. 

Hisoka hums as though mulling it over. Leorio doubts he ever started the conversation without knowing exactly what he would offer. “I will direct you towards less disastrous Roads than the one you appear determined to run down.”

Killua looks downright murderous, eyes seeming to spark. “Spell it out, clown.”

“You’re no fun. It seems your brother got it in his head that you would be back to the Crossroads, and hopes to get the jump on you in...that general direction.” Hisoka flutters a finger towards the ghostly entrance to the library, half hidden behind the leafy trees. 

Leorio bites back a groan. “But that’s where we need to go.”

“Perhaps. Which is why…” Hisoka wafts his hand slightly down the corridor, to where the trees turn summery and the sun seems to burn through humid air. A heart-shaped mark made of orange and pink air pools between the trees. “You will want to go in that direction instead. Maybe you can open it, as I cannot. But I believe it will take you where you desire.”

This plan seems like a really, really bad idea. But when Leorio turns to the Zoldyck siblings to tell them so, he finds them with their chins set and determined. It’s not unlike Gon when he gets an idea in his mind, one that might end up with him scrambling across rooftops or disappearing for a few days, but one that he doesn’t regret. And Leorio feels some of that in his own spine.

He wants to blame living with Gon for the last several months, but he’s always been a little too hardheaded himself. 

“Fine,” Killua says, and holds out his hand. Hisoka takes it and shakes, touch lingering unpleasantly even as the teenager attempts to drop it like a wet slug.

Alluka steps up to the almost portal, head tilted in concentration. “Do you know where this goes?” she asks.

Hisoka shrugs. “Not a clue. But hopefully, one where you need it to, and the other for me.”

“That’s helpful,” Leorio mutters. 

Neither Zoldyck seems to notice. “Keep your hands on my shoulder,” Alluka says. She doesn’t wait for her brother or Leorio to follow her directions before her face fades back into Nanika’s surreally blank smile. Her skirts whip against her legs as she reaches out, fingers curled against unseen barriers as she strains for a moment and yanks with a single brutal motion. The air peels away like poorly glued wallpaper, revealing a dense wood and a denser shadow, humid air floating out of the world thick enough to drink. A second portal, smaller and sharper than the first, opens next to it, the multicolored lights twinkling with malicious joy. 

Hisoka claps politely, pointed nails bright in the portal’s light.

Nanika gasps, and fades back into Alluka, who collapses to her knees. Killua has his arms supporting her in an instant, even as she waves him away. “We’re fine, Brother. You can let me go.”

“No chance.” Killua helps her to her feet instead, and she leans on him gratefully. 

Leorio does his best to glare down at the clown. After all, Leorio is the tallest person here, and he’s the one with the impossibly powerful body parts burning a hole in his pocket. He can take some authority. “Deal’s a deal,” he says to Hisoka. “Get gone.”

“Of course. And young Zoldyck, I look forward to seeing you and your partner in the near future,” Hisoka purrs to Killua. 

If Leorio didn’t know better, he’d swear Killua hisses like an angry cat, air crackling with lightning. The only thing keeping him from launching himself at the clown is the tight grip his sister has on his hand. “If any of this was your fault, no one will even find a piece of your power,” Killua says. 

“Perhaps that will satisfy our mutual…curiosity,” the clown says, teeth pointy in his smile. “See you all soon.” As he passes into the brightly lit Road, Leorio feels like a clawed hand digs into his scalp, briefly and horrifyingly as though needles pass under his skin. “Your librarian chose well with his friends, it seems,” Hisoka murmurs.

Leorio wishes he could jump out of his skin, scrub it, and put it back on like a fresh suit. Anything other than the haunting feeling of...of  _ that. _ He settles for scrubbing at his hair until it stands awkwardly, Alluka looking at him with concern.

They wait a few moments, Leorio holding his breath that Hisoka returns just to screw with them. But with no sign of a clown, and the minutes ticking by as the sun moves overhead, they don’t have time to waste. “Are you ready?” he asks Alluka.

She and her brother exchange a look made of identical blue eyes, and she nods firmly. “Let’s go,” she says, and pulls the three of them into the portal. 

This Road is almost nothing like the library corridor. It’s dark and dense, damp as an underground tunnel burrowing through the earth. Occasionally, a burst of sun-bright heat will spill through the walls, birdsong and crashing oceans echoing through the cavern. Leorio can’t tell how long they walk down it for--certainly longer than Fourth Street, and enough that the warmth soaks through his borrowed coat and makes his shirt stick to his skin with sweat. 

Alluka hesitates at the other side, fingers tight around Leorio’s wrist. “I think this is it,” she says. “Brother, do you think…”

A thousand emotions flicker through Killua’s eyes, too quick for Leorio to read. “It has to be,” he says, and steps out into sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love Cheadle and I adore Alluka. (Also last chapter's going up tomorrow, and the epilogue next week, because I'm the author and I do what I want.)
> 
> [tumblr!](xyliane.tumblr.com)


	6. And Whither Then?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A super special thank you to the talented [kigamin](http://kigamin.tumblr.com/), who was kind enough to draw not one but [TWO](http://kigamin.tumblr.com/post/161332191944/heres-one-of-my-contributions-to-hxhbb17)[DRAWINGS](http://kigamin.tumblr.com/post/161332303454/my-second-contribution-to-hxhbb17-this-scene) for this fic! I've held them to this chapter because...well, they fit. Please stare at them because they are gorgeous.

Leorio’s not sure what he expected, but saltwater splashing up and over his knees is certainly not it. Nor are the blindingly white sands, giving underfoot gently as Leorio scrambles to get as far away from the water destroying his shoes. He fares better than Killua, who for all his typical grace falls out of the portal and right onto his ass in the crystal clear blue water as soon as his sister lets go of his hand. 

Alluka seems fine. She avoids all of the potential clothing damage as she drops daintily onto the beach, shedding her heavy coat and hat in a pile along with her socks and shoes. A noise like a screaming bell rings out above their heads, and she jerks her head upwards, squinting into the sky. An enormous smile blossoms on her face. “Brother, look!”

Leorio follows her pointed finger. High above them, a bird with a wingspan as wide as Leorio is tall swoops overhead, white and yellow and deep red plumage catching the sunlight and fracturing it into rainbows that play against its underbelly. For some reason, that makes Killua laugh, and laugh, and laugh. He’s still laughing as he clamors out of the ocean and throws his arms around his sister. She squirms, even as she giggles. 

“I have the best sisters in any world,” he says. 

“You’re  _ wet," _ Alluka protests, and shoves her brother away as best she can. He lets her, but only so he too can drop the unseasonable coat into the pile Alluka’s made, along with his boots and what looks like an earring in the shape of a furnace. Leorio follows suit, toeing off his soaked shoes and relishing the feeling of sand beneath his toes. Getting rid of Gon’s coat feels like he’s lifted a wolfhound off his shoulders, and it smells almost as bad. 

“Where are we?” Leorio asks.

Killua points, this time towards the green trees lining the edge of the beach, thick enough that Leorio can’t see past the first row. Off in the distance, a mountain rises out of the trees, a lump of green expanding high into the sky. “Don’t you recognize this?”

“Why does everyone assume I know what’s going on when I’m the one asking in the first place.”

Killua throws a sock at his nose. It hits with a sweaty wet thunk, and Leorio throws it right back, missing the brat by more than a handspan.  “Old man, you’ve lived with Gon for months now. How do you not recognize Whale Island?”

As if on cue, the sound of thunder in the shape of thick soled brown feet crests the treeline as though coming from the trees themselves. Leorio barely has time to acknowledge the impossibly long black hair streaming past him in a banner, edges and split ends fading in and out of the world like mist, before a human-shaped cannonball of green, gold, and brown dressed in a white sleeveless top and green shorts slams into Killua, knocking them both backwards with a splash. 

“Killua!” Gon practically beams down at his best friend, who stares back with the sun in his eyes and his breath in his throat. “You’re here, Killua.”

Killua reaches up a hand to trace the freckles on Gon’s brown cheeks like he’s scared they’ll vanish as soon as they’re touched. Gon leans into it, golden eyes drifting half closed. “Yeah, I’m here. Can’t let you do stupid things all by yourself, right?”

“Nope. You gotta do them with me, Killua.”

“Always, you dumbass.” They rest together for a moment before Killua’s eyes flash in the noonday sun, and Gon is unceremoniously tossed head over heels over hair spiraling behind him and dunked into the water.

He resurfaces, spluttering water everywhere. “What are you doing?”

Killua shoves him back under. “What am  _ I  _ doing?” he says, not waiting for Gon to recover. “Leorio says you were  _ gone. _ And you ended up back here! That doesn’t just happen because of a stupid fuck up in the Roads. What did you do?”

Gon purses his lips stubbornly, matched by the steel glint in Killua’s eyes. “I was trying to help Kurapika! I did everything I could,” he says.

“Good.” There’s weight to the exchange Leorio doesn’t understand, but it seems to satisfy both boys. At least until Killua pokes his best friend in the sternum, hard enough that Leorio can hear the crack even from the beach. 

“What was  _ that _ for?”

“That is for worrying me, you asshole of a best friend,” he says, and attacks said best friend’s forehead. Gon whines, trying futilely to bat the dastardly pokes away from further damage. “And  _ that _ is for not picking up the fucking phone and  _ calling me! _ I know your aunt has a line, dammit!”

“I only just woke up, Killua! I felt you come onto the island so I--” A sharp trio of jabs stab into Gon’s side, and he yelps. 

“That’s not an excuse!” The next attack one is parried, fingers tangled with Gon’s and tugged so Killua is pulled forward, almost nose to nose with his boyfriend. 

“I’m sorry, Killua. I promise, I’m okay.”

“Damn right you are. Idiot.”

“You are too. That’s why you love me.” 

Alluka tugs at Leorio’s sleeve as her brother pulls Gon into a kiss. “Are they always like this?” she asks.

Leorio offers a sigh built on the suffering of years of watching mutual pining and weeks of having to live with the aftereffects. “To be honest, they’re usually worse,” he tells her. 

She wrinkles her nose. “That’s gross.” It's such a pitch-perfect imitation of her brother that Leorio can’t help but laugh and laugh and laugh until his sides ache.

He is still cackling when Gon and Killua pull each other out of the water, Killua’s arm around Gon’s waist and Gon deliberately draping his hair over Killua’s shoulders so it settles like a constantly-fading unending cape. It looks ridiculous, but not so much that it distracts from how happy the two look.

Thankfully, Alluka is there, with a tone of pure annoyed petulance the way only younger siblings are capable of. “Are you done yet?” she calls sing-song across the beach.

Killua turns a luminescent shade of pink and glares at his sister, wounded far worse than any blow Leorio’s managed to land. “And what if we’re not?” he challenges. Gon snickers into his shoulder, a wicked grin in his eyes that Leorio does not want to decipher at all.

It should be, as the Zoldycks say, gross. But Leorio’s happy they’re happy. He only wishes there weren’t more pressing concerns.

It’s astonishing how Alluka can stare up at her brother but still manage to seem as though she’s glaring down her nose at a particularly disgusting bug. “There are only a few hours left in the Solstice, and we still don’t know how to get the library back,” she says. “Stop making smoochie faces and help.”

“Smoochie faces is not very grown up thing to say,” Killua says, and has to duck before he’s hit with a flying boot. It hits Gon instead, sole straight to forehead.

“Leorio, you want to find Kurapika?” Gon asks, trying and failing to prop up the shoe on Killua's head. 

Leorio nods. He’s glad they found Gon--as much as Kurapika’s been on his mind, the thought of losing Gon has been equally if not more unthinkable. It is like imagining Gon and Killua without each other, or coming home to an apartment that doesn’t smell of freshly cut flowers and equally fresh compost. It doesn’t fit Leorio’s picture of his own life.

He doesn’t know yet where Kurapika fits in there, but if nothing else, he’d like to find out.

“Where do we need to go?” he asks. 

Gon, his hand still caught by one of Killua’s, points up the slope of the island. “I can’t do anything right now, but Aunt Mito might know what to do from up there.”

“What’s there?” Leorio asks.

Leorio doesn’t think he’s ever seen Gon smile this shyly before, boyish and hesitant. “It’s home,” he says.

The trek doesn’t take longer than ten or fifteen minutes, but it’s enough to make Leorio regret arriving on a tropical island still dressed for the middle of winter. It’s hard on Alluka, who’s exhausted from ripping open three separate portals, but it’s even worse on Gon. After the third time he stumbles into Leorio, Killua wordlessly picks him up and carries him on his back, ignoring any and all protests. 

“Weren’t you able to get rest?” Killua asks. “You must’ve slept for hours if you only got up because we opened the Roads.”

“‘s hard, and Aunt Mito was worried.”

“You woke up and the first thing you did was teleport through the plants. No wonder you’re tired, idiot.”

Gon tucks his nose into Killua’s shoulder. “I’ll be okay, Killua.”

Killua murmurs words that make Gon laugh, bright and cheerful, and a rainbow of tiny birds explode out of the trees all around them. What little space there is between the leaves is abruptly covered with a cacophony of color, feathers drifting down around them or sticking into the leaves. The trees reach up high enough to make Leorio's neck ache trying to trace them, leaves merging together into a deep green ceiling with cracks of blue sky staring down. And there's birdsong everywhere, distant sounds of wind and sea blending together in a humid symphony. “This place is beautiful,” Leorio says.

His roommate beams. “Whale Island is the best. I haven’t been back in so long. I almost forgot…” 

“Why don’t you come back?” Alluka asks. 

Golden eyes blink. “I made a promise I wouldn’t,” he says.

“It’s a stupid promise,” Killua says.

“But I made it on my power. I can’t come back here until I find my dad, and I can’t find my dad until I find Kite. I’m only here because when the Crossroads collapsed, it tried to send me home.” He buries his forehead into his arm, looped loosely around Killua. “‘m sorry, Killua. You’re my home, too.”

“Dumbass.” It’s said with the same softness as anyone else admitting eternal love, and probably means about the same thing.

Leorio pauses as they reach the end of the path, jungle opening up into a flower-filled clearing. The sun is almost too bright, the air hot and heavy under a cloudless sky. “So that’s why you’re in Yorknew? Your dad?”

“Yeah. The Crossroads help me look, when I can get to them. And I like working at the greenhouse. During the summer, when the sun’s out, it feels almost like being back here. Yorknew isn’t all that great, I don’t think. It’s harder to be an island fae when there’s no island. But Killua’s there, and I want to be with Killua.” Gon nuzzles at Killua’s neck again, making his boyfriend squawk. “I’m glad I came to the city, too. I met you, Leorio!”

“I’m glad I met you too, buddy,” Leorio says, meeting his roommate’s grin. “Even if it means dealing with Killua.”

“Fuck you too, old man.”

“Alluka, never grow up like your brother,” Leorio says, and she nods primly. Killua’s face falls in a look of absolute betrayal that Leorio ignores. He asks, “Gon, you’re coming home soon, right?”

“You’re not leaving here until you’ve rested, can open the Road on your own, and have cleaned your room,” a redheaded woman says as she walks down the flowerbed, Gon’s gold eyes and brown-skinned freckles matching hers. She has a fishing rod and a basket full of fish in her hands, and a look of steel on her face Leorio recognizes all too well as one Mama wore every time she caught him playing doctor on his siblings after getting into a scuffle or falling off a roof. 

“Aunt Mito!” Gon says, and tries to hide on his best friend’s back. His hair vanishes abruptly, back to his normal black spikes and not the impossible, misty blackness. Unfortunately, the loss of the hair’s mass has the effect of knocking Killua off balance and sending them both tumbling into the flowers.

The displeased and disapproving scowl deepens. “You have at least another day of recuperating before you can travel anywhere,” she says.

“It was through the island, it wanted to help!”

Killua and Leorio both deadpan, “Yeah, sure.” Gon sticks his tongue out at them.

Mito blows hair out of her eyes, exasperated, and holds out the basket and rod. “Take these inside, Gon. You’ll make dinner for our guests.”

“Okay,” he says meekly. He toddles off towards a two-story whitewashed house, pausing only to pick up the fish and press an apologetic kiss to his aunt’s cheek. 

“Killua, it’s good to see you again,” Mito says. “I know I mentioned this in the past, but I’m glad Gon has you. I’ve never seen him as happy as when he’s with you.” 

“He makes me happy, too,” Killua says and all but bursts into flames. If it were possible to bury his head in the dirt, the kid would probably try. Leorio almost feels bad. “I’mgonnagohelpGon.”

Gon’s too-innocent grin dances across Mito’s face for a moment as Killua sprints after his best friend. She shakes her head, amused, and turns her golden eyes on Leorio. “And you must be Leorio. Gon has told me a lot about you.”

“Hopefully nothing too terrible,” he says, and she laughs. It’s as loud and bright as her son’s.

Alluka steps forward, hand held out straight. “Hello, Miss Freecss,” she says. “I’m Alluka Zoldyck. Killua’s my brother.”

Mito accepts the handshake, before using it to pull the girl into a hug. “It’s good to meet you, Alluka. You and your sister both. Please, call me Mito.”

“Miss Mito.” She stills entirely, but her voice trembles. “I’m sorry, it’s our fault, Gon --”

The hug tightens, abruptly enough that Alluka stops speaking entirely. Leorio runs a hand through her hair, untangling a few knots and loosening the sand dried against the straight black strands. “Trust me, none of this is on you,” he says.

“But if he hadn’t had to rescue us at the midwinter Solstice, if Brother could have waited, he wouldn’t have been too weak to help his friend, and he wouldn’t be sent here. Nanika wouldn’t have had to stay.” Her face trembles, flattening into paper white and holes of nothing. Nanika says, “Gon is sad.”

Mito pulls the girl back, hands on both of her shoulders so they can look each other in the eye. Nanika’s black eyes wobble, tears pooling at their edges. “My son is an idiot all on his own,” she says. “But as much of an idiot he is for pushing himself too hard, he did everything he could for you and for your brother, and for his friend. It’s what he wanted.” Gold eyes flicker up at Leorio momentarily before returning to the Zoldyck girls. “This isn’t your fault.”

Nanika shakes her head violently. “Want Killua happy. Want Gon happy.”

“Me too. Leorio too, I’m sure.” Her smile goes lopsided. “Besides, I should thank you for bringing your brother and Leorio here. I can’t open the Roads myself from here, and Gon is much too tired to do so on his own. What you did was very brave. A little stupid, but that’s not a bad thing in these parts.”

Black eyes stutter and blink closed, reopening in glimmering blue. “Please don’t thank us,” Alluka says.

“Too late, I already did. And no take-backs on this thank you.” That wins her a choked laugh. Mito hugs her again, and this time she gets one back, pale arms holding tight. More than any physical similarity between Gon and his aunt, it’s all too easy to see where Gon gets his heart. When Alluka pulls back, rubbing her sleeve against her nose, she’s smiling. 

Mito raises an eyebrow at Leorio. “Would you like a hug too? You look like you could use one.”

It’s hard to not blush at that.“I like hugs, and I’m sure you give really good ones, but I really don’t have time. I need to find a way back to the Crossroads in Yorknew. Is there someone on Whale Island who can…” He flaps his hands, trying to mimic Nanika’s gestures. It makes Gon’s aunt bite down on a grin.

“As I mentioned, I can’t open portals. With Gon gone, and his scum of a father never coming back, I’m in charge of the whole island. None of my powers can be used on anything not here, which includes opening the Roads. And even if I could, Yorknew is too far. I’d need something to ground it on, a piece of wherever you’re going, or...”

The red stones are warm in Leorio’s palm as he fishes them out, showing them to Mito. “Can these help?”

She squints, golden eyes narrow. The air ripples with pressure, a storm condensed into the space above Leorio’s hand, and he braces his heels against the ground before he can be knocked over.

But the pressure lets up before he falls. Instead, the stones gleam with refracted light, ringing with a song that is bright and mournful. It is identical to the music Melody had performed the night before, only played on beams of sunlight and gusts of wind. It is possibly the most beautiful thing Leorio has ever heard, and all he wants to do is weep.

Alluka looks up at Leorio, eyes brimming with tears. “Is that your friend?”

“Not him. But I think it’s someone he loved.”

She holds her hands to her chest. “They loved him, too.”

Mito rubs at her forehead. “Crystallized life energy as grounding objects. That might do it,” she says weakly. “I’m not sure how much help I will be, but… yes, this might work. It will find your friend.” 

She takes a deep breath, and Leorio doesn’t have time to cover his ears before she bellows her son’s name. The entire clearing and the jungle beyond trembles at the noise, birds scattering and something that sounds like a bear the size of a house roaring in response. Leorio’s not sure if the shout is supernatural, or simply the best way of getting ahold of Gon in the loudest way possible.

From the house, Leorio can distantly make out a matching, if less ear-splitting call of, “ _ WHAAAT _ .”

“Teenagers,” Mito huffs. “Doesn’t matter how many seasons they’ve lived, teenagers are teenagers.  _ GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE. _ ”

“ _ KAAAAAAAAAY _ .” 

Alluka carefully unpeels her hands from her ears. “Is it safe?”

Mito grins, white teeth flashing. “Safe as houses, for now. Alluka, will you and Nanika be able to find us the best spot to make a portal?”

“I don’t--” Alluka cuts herself off, listening to nothing. “Nanika’s too tired to make anything, but she can point us in the right direction. It’s...behind the foxbear trees?”

“Hm. That might work.” The flowers around them shudder as though a heavy wind passes through, one that ruffles Mito’s skirts but Leorio can’t feel at all. Mito scowls ferociously, and Leorio and Alluka barely manage to cover their ears as she spins back on her heels towards the house. “ _ GON FREECSS USE YOUR LEGS AND WALK OR YOU’LL BE SLEEPING IN THE SEAWEED TONIGHT. _ ”

The rustling stops begrudgingly.

It takes a few more minutes before Gon and Killua make it back out of the house, Killua trembling with laughter and Gon uncharacteristically embarrassed. “Sorry, Aunt Mito,” he says without preamble.

“Do you not want to help your friend find this librarian of his?” she asks, hands on her hips. Gon’s not actually shorter than her--if anything, he’s a bit taller--but she looms over him all the same. 

He perks up, exchanging a blinding smile with Killua. “You found Kurapika?”

“Not quite. But Leorio has family remains of his librarian. We should be able to use them as grounding objects for the Road, to find the right exit.” She walks off into the forest, three teenagers and Leorio rushing to keep up.

Gon grins. “Really, Leorio? You found more? That’s great!”

“Does Kurapika know?” Killua asks.

“No, but--”

“Are you going to tell him? Do you know where any other ones are?” Gon says.

“Yes, and no, they’re--”

Killua’s eyebrows rise. “Wow, you really are serious about him. Never thought that would be your type.”

“Brother, how long has Leorio been dating the librarian?”

“Like, a day at best. Also didn’t think you were the sort to rush into things. Or Kurapika to.”

“I think Leorio is Kurapika’s type, too! They kind of fit, right?”

“Kurapika’s not  _ mine _ , we’re not--” Leorio tries to protest. None of the teenagers listen, inane questions piling on top of one another. 

Thankfully, Mito is of a less juvenile mind, not least because she’s the only other adult. Or adult-minded fae. She coughs loudly, and the three teenagers abruptly hush, save for Gon’s giggles. “Gon, if I supply the power, can you open a way into a Road ending with the stones?”

Gon frowns in thought, mentally calculating what he can do. “I think so,” he says. Leorio’s probably never going to get used to seeing Gon’s golden eyes, least of all with the weighty expression on his face. “You don’t have to do this, Leorio. The Crossroads will come back soon. They always have.”

The Crossroads aren’t the important thing here. Not to Leorio, at least. “But Kurapika won’t. If I can help, I am going to.”

Gon nods, satisfied. “Killua and me can’t go with you, and Aunt Mito isn’t allowed. Alluka, can you?”

She shakes her head, letting her brother take her hand and squeeze, a mutual lifeline. “I wouldn’t know where to go, and Nanika’s barely awake. She wouldn’t last.”

They stop not at a clearing, but in a dense wood, air close enough to feel solid against Leorio’s skin. He makes a mental note to bring nothing but swimming trunks if he ever visits again. Mito, Gon, and Alluka all take an extra step towards a half-rotted trunk before hesitating, Killua’s hand tight on his sister’s and Gon’s tattoos flickering in the midday shadows. 

Mito doesn’t stop until she has her hand against the tree. Thick brush, leaves bigger than Leorio’s briefcase, sprout up from the ground beneath her feet, winding around her legs. She breathes out once, twice, and stretches out her spare hand as though petting a favored pet. Massive flowers bloom against her, blossom and grow and rot away. 

“This is the place.” She studies Leorio, golden eyes piercing. “There is a reason humans don’t travel the Roads alone. If you do this, you won’t have any guidance other than a pair of dead eyes and your own heart. And once you get where you’re going, there’s no way of getting back on your own except with someone else’s help.”

It’s what Gon said, the same concern in slightly different words. And Leorio’s answer is the same. “As long as there’s a chance, I’m going to help Kurapika.”

She doesn’t smile, but a weight lifts off her shoulders. Looping tattoos in emerald and bronze glimmer against her arms as she slowly circles her hands, palms flat out before her. The air ripples between the trees. Nothing is signalled, not that Leorio can see, but Gon steps up behind her, bracing against the tree. A space made of void and heat stretches out from his hair and down his aunt’s arm, tangling with the shadows and disappearing into the beginnings of the portal. The shimmering field solidifies, dark greens and darker shadows beneath them.

It’s beautiful. It’s dangerous. And hopefully, it’s going to take Leorio where he needs to go. His heart pounds in his throat. “I guess this is it,” he says. “Do I...walk in?”

“That’s usually how it works. Without the fae, though, it’ll depend on you,” Killua says. His face softens, worry overwritten with care. Leorio wants to poke fun at him, because it’s so rare he gets the chance to do so without any potential for an immediate and painful rebuttal, but it’s almost too easy. And maybe if he holds off, Killua will return the favor later. 

It’s nice to know that Killua does like Leorio, somewhere in his heart. He’s just a brat of it.

“Wait, Leorio!”

Gon gasps and stumbles back, face wan beneath his freckles. Mito hums, arms straining. “Just a moment, Gon.”

“Thanks, Aunt Mito.” Gon grins like sunshine and wraps his arms around Leorio. It abruptly hurts to breathe, and not because of the way his roommate is hugging him like a vice. Leorio hugs him back as tight as he can, before lifting the teenaged-shaped fae up and swinging him around. Gon laughs loud enough to send birds scattering out of the trees. 

When he’s set down, Gon grins widely, teeth blindingly white. “Are you ready?”

Leorio bounces on his toes, grateful for the dry if slightly sandy shoes. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” he says. 

“Good luck, Leorio,” Alluka says.

Her brother nods, blue eyes clear. “You’ll find him.” 

Behind the waves of humid air, it’s hard to tell, but Mito’s form wavers, fading at the edges much like Gon’s impossibly long hair. All that remains stable are the emerald lights on her arms and the luminescent gold in her eyes. “Picture where you want to go and hold on tight,” she says. “Don’t let go, no matter what. The Roads will take you where you need to be.”

“What do I--”

Gon’s eyes blaze with green and gold sunlight, and Leorio is abruptly sunken into the heart of a star, blinding heat threatening to swallow him whole. The stones in his hand erupt with heatless fire, swirling around Leorio’s arms in serpentine tingles. Somewhere in the distance, right next to his ear, Leorio hears the chorus of a storm on the open sea. 

He steps into the portal.

And then the world’s gone.

 

\-----

 

Leorio swears his feet echo off of tile as he walks through endless black. He’s not entirely sure, however. There’s no sound, and there’s not even a feeling of a floor at all. It’s possible, given how he can see and touch and smell nothing but the emptiness surrounding him, that he’s just making this all up. Maybe he could be in bed, oversleeping the final Cheadle told him to skip. Or he’s in Kurapika’s office, sleeping off the side effects of partying too hard with magic librarians. Kurapika has a nice smile when it reaches his eyes. What if he dreamed that?

That would be nice if it were real, so Leorio can see it again.

Even the lights of the eyes have gone out. He still feels them, warm and solid in his palm, but the shining ruby fire that had been so bright on Whale Island is snuffed out in the all-consuming darkness. There’s got to be a metaphor in there somewhere, but Leorio’s not the right person to find it. He’s more concerned with how everything feels like nothing, like an absence, except for the Kurta eyes.

_ Picture where you want to go and hold on tight. Don’t let go, no matter what. The Roads will take you where you need to be. _

The problem here is, Leorio has no idea where he’s supposed to go. The library is only so much of a place to start. It’s too big, too much. Trying to picture even a sliver of it makes Leorio’s mind ache, spinning with colors he can taste and visions he can smell. Besides, he’s already been down that Road, and there were only clowns and impossible seasons of trees.

Leorio banishes the thought of Hisoka as quickly and brutally as he can. The last thing he wants now is to run into him.

He’s still walking through blackness. At least the feeling of the gemstones digging into his palm are real. They pulse gently with every step he takes, perhaps converting their unseeable glow into a steady rhythm. Or the rhythm was always there, but Leorio was too distracted to notice. Either way, it’s comforting. Something of Kurapika’s.

Leorio pictures Kurapika in his office. Not trying to explain undoubtedly simple magic to an idiot human, but skimming through books or typing up notes for Melody to use later. He’d forget to turn up the lamp as it darkens outside, until he’s left squinting at half-legible scrawls and uncertain what is in the text and what are his own critiques. More than once, he must have written something on a post-it, but missed, and it’s not until later he notices the pen marks on his desk--marks that are left forever. Maybe, if someone comes to visit, not because they’re lost or alone or hurting, but because they want to, he’ll smile a little and it will light up his gray eyes.

They’ve known each other for less than a day. Any picture Leorio paints of Kurapika is going to be lacking, full of gaping holes and missing clips. But Leorio’s always been pretty good at people, at sketching out who they are and who they might be. And with Kurapika, he’d like to fill in a few of those gaps.

He’s so lost in his thoughts, Leorio misses the appearance of a cold stone handle in his hand and nearly smashes his nose into a firm wooden door. Almost by instinct (and with an awful lot of surprised cursing--Killua must be rubbing off), he catches himself and creaks open the door, not hesitating as he walks over the threshold.

After however long it’s been in the darkness, the dim forest light is almost blinding. The door opens to the edge of a clearing, a tiny stream running through a small village built in a circle around a central plaza and ringed with forest. Thick tree trunks, too wide to reach around, are covered in yellow and orange leaves, the quiet of early morning or late afternoon an almost eerie stillness after the eternal noise of Whale Island and the intangible silence of the Roads. But as his eyes adjust, the oddities begin to stand out. Instead of trees, there are bookshelves with branches, leaves in autumn colors written upon with ink in brown and orange. Instead of houses, massive study tables thatched in loose leaf paper and scattered textbooks form a circle with the plaza made of the same stones Leorio had walked down on the way to the Crossroads, a mix of pebbles and ceramic shards in all colors imaginable and then some.

Instead of immaculately pressed shirtsleeves and sleek black pants, Kurapika wears a heavy blue tunic spun through with golden thread, draped over simple white linen. He glances up at the sound of the door closing, not exactly surprised but certainly not pleased, either. 

Leorio holds out the red stones in his palm. “Hey, Kurapika. I found these.”

Five chains dangle off of the librarian’s fingers, carelessly spun around his palm and wrist in a tangle of metal and edges. Those same chains rattle as he gently plucks the offering, catching on the buttons on the sleeves of Leorio’s jacket and tugging. He doesn’t seem to notice, not even as he returns to his seat, all but dragging Leorio with him.

“I hadn’t expected…” Kurapika drifts off, staring at the tiny remains of his family. They hum quietly, an echo of an echo, and Kurapika swallows heavily. He murmurs something, words curling in on themselves, and carefully encloses the eyes with both his hands. He presses his lips to the back of his knuckles, eyes shut tight.

When he opens his hands, the stones are gone. The only thing they leave behind is a song in the trees and the tears on Kurapika’s cheeks. 

Leorio drops onto the log, bark scratching through his trousers as he leans back. An afternoon sky filled with stars stretches overhead, peeking through the thick fall foliage. It’s impossible to tell if this is a memory or an imagined place. Maybe it’s both, or neither. “I was worried, you know.”

“Over nothing. I’m alive, for whatever it is worth.”

“And you found the library, I think.” The trees rustle, a familiar baleful humor trickling out of the bark much like out of the stacks. The pools of water scattered haphazardly around the grass, lined with burgundy-colored moss, stare up as though daring Leorio to peer inside, see what might be hiding. The place is never going to like Leorio, he’s pretty sure. The feeling is mostly mutual. But it’s more welcoming than it was last night, a begrudging respect in the whispering of the wind.

Kurapika sighs, plucking at the shortest of his chains. “I believe it prefered to stay with me rather than continue its position,” he says, a humorless smile stretching across his lips. “With so many Roads coming together from so many disparate places and times, it’s unsurprising the Crossroads developed a sense of sentimentality. Or it simply found the romance section.”

“Will it go back?”

“Perhaps. It’s been vocal, in its own way, about making me return before the sun sets and we have to wait until summer to allow such a movement.” He peers upward rather than checking the pocketwatch in his hand. “It thinks I’m being foolishly sentimental, holding onto things that have long since lost any value. I think it’s being a hypocrite.”

Leorio smirks. “If any library can be hypocritical, it’s definitely yours.”

Kurapika doesn’t give him an answer. Instead, he asks, “What are you doing here, Leorio? If you’re still here after the sun sets, you too will be stuck here, in whatever sort of Road we’ve ended up upon. I cannot send you home.”

“You still owe me an answer,” Leorio says.

There is no response for long enough that Leorio wonders if Kurapika’s forgotten about their conversation under the gingko trees. “You know, from when--”

“Yes, Leorio, I remember.” The words are brittle, crinkling at their edges. “You came all this way for such a minor thing?”

When put like that, Leorio’s not sure who he’s more annoyed with, Kurapika for everything or himself for this fool’s errand. Almost certainly Kurapika. “It’s not like there’s really any other time. The Solstice is almost over.” 

“Then ask.”

Red eyes are still determined to focus on the thatched desks, the sky. Anywhere other than Leorio, really. “You’ll tell me the truth?”

“ _ Ask _ , Leorio. I already said I would.”

There are so many questions Leorio has. Who Kurapika is, really. How he ended up working at the Fourth Street Library, rather than exploring the worlds it goes to or how to heal more than surface wounds. Why he chose chains to control his powers, if it was part of the library or some sense of self-flagellation. How he keeps his button down shirt so immaculately pressed. His favorite flavor of ice cream. If he would like paella, or maybe crepes. Why that red earring is so distracting when Leorio should be trying to focus on figuring out what question to ask.

Leorio wants to know everything about Kurapika. A single question could never suffice. But it’s all he has.

So Leorio asks, “What do you want?”

Kurapika finally meets Leorio’s eyes, brilliant and astonishing. “You never fail to surprise,” he says.

Leorio smiles, just a little. “It’s only fair. You’re nothing but surprises.”

“The question is much too abstract, how specific would you like it? Is this what I would want, or what I want immediately? Carnal, physical desire? Emotional catharsis?” He leans forward into Leorio’s space, hair tumbling out into his face. “Perhaps, you want to know what I want of you.”

Leorio reaches out and tucks it back behind an ear, touch lingering against the soft strands. Leorio knows full well what he wants. Doctor, savior, friend--maybe it’s foolish to dream, to be selfish and want to make the world to be better. But just because the world is bigger than he ever imagined, doesn’t mean that he was wrong. It means he has more ways to help.

And that tells him nothing of the answer to his question. “It’s however you want to answer it,” he says. 

Kurapika looks at a loss for words, unable to process whatever is going on behind his racing thoughts. So Leorio waits, as patient as he can be. He doesn’t know how much more time they have before the Solstice ends, and this little world collapses, or it traps Leorio in Kurapika’s regrets forever. 

“I want…” His voice, tiny and uncertain, drifts off, caught in an attempt to voice desires he hasn’t allowed himself in so long, he has almost forgotten how. “Once, I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know about the human world, about why you covet power and magic. So I left home, and all I learned was that my people died without me, my home locked away in this dead end of a Road and my family turned to stones. Our power coalesces in our eyes, you see, and they make lovely gemstones without a face to keep them in.”

The little forest flickers, ghosts of small children with familiar red eyes and unfamiliar joyful smiles drifting through the afternoon sunlight. They circle close to Kurapika, almost close enough to touch, before dashing away with soundless laughter. “Then I wanted revenge. I wanted to pay back those who did this tenfold, a hundredfold, so they knew intimately the rage they created in my heart. Any knowledge was secondary, unless it accomplished this.”

The children fade away, replaced with burning gravestones, each one with a pair of red gemstones placed before it. Leorio can’t make out the writing, written in a swooping text that must be that of Kurapika’s family. “Did you find the people who did this?” he asks.

Kurapika nods once, jolting. “I did, some of them.”

“And?”

“And those I found are now dead or worse. But they didn’t have the remains of my family. Those were sold or lost, and while I have found most, they were scattered, their new keepers unaware of what they held beyond their power. No matter how far down the Roads I traveled, or what I thought I’d searched for…” He trails off, voice distant. “I wanted vengeance, even if it destroyed me. But I have lost even that.”

Leorio’s hand covers Kurapika’s, metal biting into his palm. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

Kurapika draws back into himself, taking his hand and its cold chains and its warm, warm skin with him. “I’m nothing without my anger, Leorio. It’s what attached me to the Crossroads. It’s what these chains are made of. You ask what I want? I want nothing more than to see my family put to rest, and then myself along with them.”

“Kurapika--”

“I couldn’t save them. I can’t avenge them. I can’t even give them a proper burial. I couldn’t even get  _ here _ without almost destroying the Crossroads themselves and my friends along with it.” Kurapika stares out at the translucent village, red eyes lost to time. “Now that I’m back here, I can at least attend to their memory. This way, no one else has to become lost because of my foolishness. It’s all I want. I’m nothing more than that.”

The forest is quiet as Kurapika finishes, wind gentle as it shakes the trees and brushes blond hair across his face. It doesn’t touch the village, which ripples as though on the other side of a pond. It really is nothing more than a shadow of what it was. Leorio wonders what it would be like, spending every day watching the people you love but unable to reach out and touch them, to hug them, to find closure for their memory.

It took him years to put Pietro to rest. In some ways, Leorio’s sure he never has, and never will. It’s hard, and it’s painful, and it hurts more than anything that Leorio can’t remember what his closest friend’s laughter sounded like. But he’s moving on, or at least trying to. 

Kurapika deserves that. He deserves rest. And Leorio has to have some way to help him realize that. 

So he says, “That’s a load of bullshit.”

He really wishes he had a better brain-to-mouth filter. 

Kurapika’s hand fists the collar of his shirt, dragging him down almost until they’re nose to nose. At this distance, Leorio can clearly see the raging red lights dancing in the librarian’s eyes, different shades of red from blood to ruby to a nearly-white pink all swirling together in his irises. “Take that back,” he snarls.

Leorio could. Doctors are supposed to have bedside manner, to not piss off their patients. But Kurapika’s not Leorio’s patient. And he needs to hear the truth, however Leorio can tell it. “Not happening.” 

Kurapika tightens his hold, not quite enough to cut off air but enough to be deeply unpleasant, especially with how Leorio’s spine twists to accommodate the height difference. “Why not?”

“Because you are more than just your anger, Kurapika! You can help people. You helped me.”

He’s dropped abruptly, the lack of pressure making his head snap backwards with equal force to what he’d been held with. Kurapika’s eyebrows come together in a confused crease, hand trembling from holding onto nothing. “I did nothing more than anyone else would,” he says.

Leorio can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You knew I had no idea what was going on, so you explained it. You knew there was no chance of me leaving the Roads alone, so you stayed with me as long as you could. And you threw me out of the Crossroads when your dumbass plan went to shit, rather than saving yourself. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you kept me from getting lost at all.” 

“But I don’t deserve any of this. All I am is my need for revenge, and that’s  _ gone _ , Leorio. I’m nothing anymore.”

“You’re something to me.” Before Kurapika can protest or Leorio’s brain can catch up with his mouth, he forges on. “And not just to me! I’m not a good measurement, we’ve known each other for a day, and just because I  _ want _ to know more about you doesn’t mean I’m the right person to make this sort of decision.”

Kurapika chokes back a laugh, or tears, or maybe both. “Leorio--”

“Wait, listen.” Leorio takes a breath, trying his best to organize his thoughts. “You’re something to me, but you’re also something to your friends. Melody, Palm, Killua, Gon--they’re all ready to help, they care about you so much. And not a single one of them regrets trying to help you, not at all. They’d all be here if they could. Hell, this damn library followed you all the way to the end of the Roads, and it still doesn’t want to leave. It’s as stubborn as you.”

The trees rustle, at least a few leaves drifting down onto Leorio’s head. If it’s agreement or irritation, Leorio’s not sure. Somehow, it still feels supportive, even if he has to shake poetry out of his hair. Kurapika raises his arm in a motion like he’s going to grab at one of the pages, but pulls back at the last moment, curling his fingers over his heart. 

Leorio steps close enough to touch. “You’re something to me, to all of us. So please, Kurapika. Come  _ home _ .”

Red eyes, soft and wondering, search Leorio’s face. “I don’t have an answer to your question. I don’t know what I want anymore,” Kurapika says.

“I don’t mind waiting. And I want to help, however I can.” Leorio holds out a hand. It’s not much, but it’s all he has. 

But as Kurapika takes his hand, fingers and palm calloused from chains run roughshod over them for too long, maybe it’s enough for a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, as they say, that's all folks! (Except it's not quite--stay tuned next week for an epilogue, and check my tumblr for a bit of housekeeping. I might also link to some of the things I used as inspiration, or note the various footnotes necessary for this whole mess.)
> 
> In the meantime, drop me a line on my [tumblr](https://xyliane.tumblr.com) or come say hi!


	7. Epilogue: The Road Goes Ever

The library looks the same as it did before the new year. Tall. Grey. Foreboding. Obviously displeased that Leorio is anywhere near its brick facade, let alone walking down its front steps.

“Yeah, I feel the same,” Leorio mutters. He’s not sure, but the thick velvet curtains might jostle a little in amusement, just behind the thick glass of the front windows. He resists the urge to flip it off, not least because he’s not entirely sure if it can see anything or simply pretends like it can.

The front door opens smoothly at least, and Leorio doesn’t even have to knock. “Hey, Melody!” he calls, unspooling the thick green scarf Gon’s aunt had sent, a very seasonable sort of present. The note had been cryptic in a way that Leorio suspects is genetic to the Freecss line.

_ Be glad you found what you’re looking for, but don’t get too lost _ .

At least it’s warm. And comfortable.

The gust of cold air makes Melody look up from her sheet music, flute next to her computer as her fingers trace over the notes. “Good afternoon, Leorio,” she says. “He’s in his office. Will you have any trouble finding it?”

“Very funny,” he says, and holds out one of the three steaming paper cups. “I get you tea straight from Gon’s stash, and you give me grief for something that wasn’t even my fault.”

She laughs, a chorus of tiny bells echoing around the lobby, but accepts the peace offering all the same. “I believe it was at least somewhat on your head. But I’m glad it turned out as it did, mostly.”

“Yeah, me too.” Leorio’s surprised at how much he agrees with her. Magic libraries, fae roads, powerful nights at midwinter… And that’s not even the mindboggling effects of traveling back to the Crossroads as the Crossroads rebuilt itself around him and Kurapika. Leorio can’t remember most of the trip back from the Kurta gravesite, and when he pokes at the memories all he gets is a mental equivalent of getting wasted and wandering through a supernova made of stained glass and ink. Alluka and Gon both said it is probably for the best he doesn’t think about it too much.

Well, there could be worse things. Like never seeing Kurapika again. That would definitely be a worse thing.

Leorio drapes his coat over the rack next to Melody’s desk, tucking the scarf and his gloves into the pockets so they don’t fall. “I should be back in a bit.”

“Take your time,” she calls as he pushes open the door, mentally willing the library to open to Kurapika’s office. His head presses in, much like at the front, with a feeling of bemused annoyance, but Leorio holds firm to the image of the cozy desk, with too many papers scattered around for it to be considered neat, the sleek computer and dusty books lying side by side. Kurapika’s bemused eyes, flashing red and gray.

The library opens to the stacks. The first bookcases are filled with how-tos on wooing a potential significant other, scattered through with a few sex ed books. More than one has very colorful and incredibly detailed cover art, with little to no accuracy medically-speaking and titles Leorio would have been embarrassed to read as a teenager.

“Magic libraries are shits,” Leorio mutters, and stalks through the bookshelves until he finds the pale yew door, black stone handle glittering with streaks of red. He swears the light coming out of the skylight trembles slightly, although if it’s in laughter or warning, he’s not even close to sure.

Thankfully, this time the door opens to the right room. Kurapika is working at his desk, chewing on his pen and making notes in a book that’s probably older than the building Leorio works in. His computer whirs with displeasure--the dust can’t be good for it, nor can the apparent lack of air movement.

Before Leorio can say anything, Kurapika looks up, startled at the interruption. “Leorio!” he says, pen falling out of his mouth and straight onto his notes. “I didn’t… I didn’t expect…” He coughs, cheeks dusted with pink. "I haven't seen you since new year's. What are you doing here?"

Leorio holds out the two mugs he’s brought with him, handing the smaller one over. “I brought coffee,” he says. “Double cap, whole milk, lots of foam.”

Kurapika’s startled expression doesn’t fade, not enough to accept the offering. “How did you know?”

“Gon told me, on the Solstice,” Leorio says. Which he did--and Melody told him afterwards, and a string of text messages from Palm and someone named Basho claiming to work in the library. Even the Zoldycks mentioned it this morning, Killua waking up at the crack of nine to make sure Leorio knew before wandering back to bed. It’s more embarrassing that they seem to think he’d forget, not that they’re offering to help. That’s what friends are for, right?

“Of course he did,” Kurapika says, the same tone of voice anyone who’s known Gon long enough adopts when talking about him, dry and exasperated and fond. He finally takes the mug, lifting off the lid to sniff at the steamed milk. It has a little heart drawn in it, preserved through travel by the magic of coffee. “And what would you like in exchange?” he says.

It’s impossible to stop the laugh that erupts out of Leorio’s throat, which means it’s also impossible to stop Kurapika from glaring at him. The effect’s ruined by the smile in his eyes. “I still don’t have an answer to your question of what I want, but I am serious, Leorio. You know it’s more fair to exchange things, rather than…”

“I’d rather offer it as a gift, but if you’re insisting, I won’t say no.” Kurapika rolls his eyes, lounging back in his chair as if to say  _ get on with it. _

“Two things,” Leorio says. “First, you offered magic lessons. I want to take you up on that.”

Blond eyebrows skyrocket towards his hairline. “I’d think after everything you’ve been through, magic would be the furthest thing from your mind,” the librarian says.

It’s not a no, which is better than Leorio’d expected. “You did offer. And besides, if I’m going to get rich and try to heal the world, I might as well know all of the tricks available to me, right?”

“Magic has a price.”

“I brought you coffee. Coffee, as any med student will tell you, is the next best thing to sleep, which is way out of my price range, anyways. But learning magic seems like something I’ll be able to afford. I want to help everyone.”

Kurapika looks at him with wonder, or incredulity, or bemused concern. Maybe all three. “You do take on too much for one human,” he says. “And?”

“And what?”

“Your second offering. In exchange for the coffee.”

Leorio’s smile widens. This next part is harder, to the point that even Gon and Killua were all but shoving him out the door when he wouldn’t stop worrying over it. He’s been preparing what he wants to say for more than a week, and there are so many ways it could possibly go wrong. But, well. He’s already gotten one not no, might as well shoot for the second.

“A date,” he says.

If Kurapika’d looked astonished before, now he looks downright boggled. “A...date,” he repeats.

“You and me. At that restaurant down on tenth, the one with the enormous crepes. I’ve passed it every time I’ve come here, and I want to try it.”

“You want to exchange coffee for magic lessons...and a dinner.”

This idea is seeming less and less good, the longer Kurapika’s eyes stay dinner plate wide and the more incredulous his voice gets. Leorio rubs the back of his neck, trying to lessen the uncomfortable feeling of failure. If nothing else, at least he tried. “Well. Yeah. That’s what I asked. And you could take some time out of the library, walk around Yorknew, maybe even go say hi to Gon at the apartment...”

“This offer is not satisfactory.”

Leorio tries not to fiddle with his own mug. He knew the likelihood of being turned down, but it still hurts. “If you think this is some sort of weird fae manipulation thing, it's not. I was serious when I said I want to get to know you better. And I like you, so I'm asking. And it's okay if you don't want to, I just thought...” 

Kurapika marches around the desk until he’s standing before Leorio, gray eyes dancing with a joke Leorio doesn’t know. “I meant, an exchange should be balanced. You’ve offered one thing, in exchange for my two.”

“You asked for three questions, and I only got one!”

The brief quirk of Kurapika’s lips is enough to make Leorio’s heart turn into a hummingbird and buzz against his chest. “A fair exchange at the time, I think. But for this…”

Leorio likes wearing ties. They make him feel professional, well-dressed. This one’s brand new, a gift from Killua and Alluka astonishingly not in a shade of neon but a nice, placid blue. It brings out his eyes, and matches the inside lining of his favorite suit jacket.

None of that matters when Kurapika uses the tie as a lever to pull Leorio down and himself up into a kiss, lips warm and a bit off-center and absolutely, entirely magical.

When they pull back, Kurapika’s eyes are red around the edges, but he’s smiling, and Leorio’s smiling, and they’re both smiling, barely a breath apart and grinning like they can never stop. Leorio brushes blond hair out of the way, resting his hand against Kurapika’s cheek. It feels like it fits.

“So that’s a yes to the date?” Leorio asks.

Kurapika bursts into laughter, his hand tangling with Leorio’s. “Yes, Leorio. Consider this a deal,” he says, and leans up to kiss him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it! I really, truly cannot believe this is done. thanks again to my beta, to the mods for this year's big bang, my wonderful amazing super talented artists, and to you for reading this! also to my friend wuzzy, who inspired the initial idea for this thing (and then it spiraled out of control hahaaa).
> 
> also thanks to tolkien, whose poem "The Road Goes Ever On And On" I cribbed for every single chapter title, and thankfully the poem had enough lines that when chapter five got broken up, I still had more choices to go with.
> 
> if you'd like to get in touch with me, or message me, or yell at togashi about how leorio hasn't been in any of the recent chapters, you can reach me over at my [tumblr!](https://xyliane.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> The Big Bang for 2017! I'm going to upload this on Sunday afternoons until all the chapters are out. I hope you enjoy it!


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